Clean water, thriving gardens: Zambian Abundance!

Hello again,

I am leaving this evening from Israel to Zambia for 3 weeks to check up on how the local leadership is doing, and to help them to make the necessary changes in order to ensure success in our goals.

Together with these project leaders, we will be hosting a group of 10 graduate students from the Albert Katz International School for Desert Studies of the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, where I am studying. These students have been involved this past semester in the ongoing Rural Water Development course with Prof. Noam Weisbrod, with which I have been involved as an assistant. They will be coming to Simango for a week in order to conduct water quality sampling and to help build several demonstration sites of the BioSand filter, which we are promoting as part of this project.

I am also hoping to create a short video from this visit in order to summarize the project in an appealing and comprehensible way.

I will keep you all posted when I return.

In the meantime, do visit the project blog:  "Out of the Ground"

Blessings,

Adam

Links:

• Project Blog

This "Chilimo" or Zambian Dry Season in Simango, was different than others.  In several community locations, the normally dry, parched ground was unseasonably green thanks to the community's efforts in tending the drip-irrigated gardens that were established this year to generate revenue for various community and household water improvements.

When I return to Zambia in February, I will be distributing 5-10 treadle pumps to members of these gardens who worked the required hours to finance them over 2 years. Besides the obvious benefit to these individuals, these treadle pumps will serve as a billboard to others in the community who didn't believe or didn't catch the vision that their work will be rewarded.

Miyanda, a recent BS graduate of the University of Zambia Soil Science department, has been living in Simango as a project manager. His latest update is telling:

“People were glad when I told them of your coming in February and that you wanted the working times so you could prepare treadle pumps for those who qualify. Although everyone has already started planting in their fields, a good number of them, especially in Sibunimba Village, have continued to come to work in the gardens to add up more to their hours. They would usually attend to their fields in the morning and come to the garden in the afternoon. We are now planting new crops and people have been more cooperative than I expected. As days go by they see the improvements the project has brought to their community and appreciate it more. At least they could afford to buy some relish from nearby and can still realize some more benefits even into the future.”

I hope that they truly do realize these benefits into the future.

The 6th World Water Forum recently highlighted this project in their monthly newsletter - see link below!

I have recently been asked to travel to the UK in January to speak to the community connected with Ben Gurion University there about the project.

And in April, I will be presenting research results from the field at the Unite for Sight Global Health and Innovation Conference at Yale University as a Student Leader in Global Health.

God bless,

Adam

Links:

• See 'Water for Work' in the Time for Solutions"