Summary
This project aims to empower 5,000+ residents of a rural area in Zambia toward prosperity through developing sources of clean water with income-generating gardens, all on a microfinance platform.
What is the issue, problem, or challenge?
Extreme poverty and recurring water-related diseases such as cholera and diarrhea compound together and hold many underserved rural areas in a vicious cycle. Like much of rural Zambia, 98.5% of residents of the Simango sub-district, earn less than $1.25 / day, and many go hungry through the long dry season as most depend wholly on their yields of rainfed maize to meet their subsistence needs and household expenditures. Water sources are commonly contaminated or located far from households
How will this project solve this problem?
Through microfinance, households will be offered the chance to improve their own lives by using water and horticultural inputs given on a loan platform to implement a 3-step self-financed water improvement program: 1) develop a clean water source 2) plant a garden and 3) earn income.
Potential Long Term Impact
By creating income opportunities from clean water sources, short-term health impacts are more likely to be sustained long after the initial project is implemented. Also, since every improvement is self-financed, users can choose their own upward path
Project Message
It has been exciting to see people in Simango catch the vision that they can do it themselves. The church has already signed up and are ready to garden to pay for their own borehole.
- Adam Abramson, Project Leader
Funding Information
Total Funding Received to Date: $36,334
Funding Information
This project is now in implementation and no longer available for funding.
Received funds will be used to accomplish concrete objectives as
indicated in the project's "Activities" section. Updates will be posted under the
"Project Report" tab as they become available.
Donors' contributions and pledges to this project totaled $36,334
.
The original project funding goal was $50,000.
Additional Documentation
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
Resources