Give Safe Drinking Water - Save a Child from Dying

In our region of operations, over 25% of children under the age of five die every year from effects of drinking unsafe water. Also barely half of the population has access to disinfected water; while 80% of illnesses detected in the region originate from the water people drink. Sadly about 95% of the population depends on the potentially contaminated water points; and worse still, over 50% of the people are without access to sanitation. Coupled to this scary situation is the fact that many families in the Niger Delta region are unable to afford to send their children to school. Most adults in the region are illiterates. For those children who are fortunate enough to attend school, 20-25% is absent due to intestinal illness or caring for the needs of other family members afflicted.

In partnership with community based groups such as the Rotary Clubs of Aladimma and Owerri respectively (District 9140 of Rotary International), we have designed and developed communal pour-flush and Ventilation Improved Pit (VIP) latrines in two public schools. Collaboratively, we have achieved this milestone because of our conviction that it takes the art of leadership to prove that poverty is much more than a lack of income or a shortage of material goods. And that human poverty, the lack of basic capabilities for participating in the activities of the community, is greatly exacerbated by lack of sanitation or toilets.

Therefore, for a group of students/pupils living in hostels surrounded by human waste, it is stigmatizing and marginalizing. It creates embarrassment and deprives them of participation, choices and opportunities. This sadly was the lot of the students of the Amakohia Secondary School, Amakohia, Owerri and the Special School for the Deaf, Orodo, Mbaitoli LGA of Imo State. Before the collaborative interventions, these schools which collectively have a population of 1,350 students had no toilet facilities any kind. Both schools are also mixed/co-educational (boys and girls together).

Then, students answering the call of nature adopted open defecation. It was a nauseating site to behold these students – male and female alike do this. The result was that these students were accordingly deprived of some primary economic benefits linked with having toilets; and these included; saving time; reducing direct and indirect health costs; increasing the return on investments in education; and safeguarding nearby water resources etc. The biggest element in all these was saving time. By lacking toilets at the hostels, the students spent a great deal of time each day looking for secluded places to defecate within and around the school premises. The World Health Organization estimates this time has an economic value of well over US$ 100 billion each year. Many workdays are lost to diarrheal disease –when the student is ill as well as when he is caring for a sick friend/colleague.

Other social factors concurrently addressed by the intervention are those of privacy, dignity, safety, convenience and status. The hundreds of students who must defecate behind bushes, in plastic bags, in roadside ditches face daily assaults to their human dignity. The female students were hit hardest by the absence of toilets in the school as they have their dignity vulnerable to assault by locals. Therefore, the design, building and donation of 2 blocks of Pour flush and VIP latrines in the school at this time is a welcome accomplishment.

According to Ebuka; the head boy of one of the schools: ‘‘…..a clean toilet in my school and in my time here is a breakthrough. Please tell your fund raisers that we are grateful’’

This further enriches our project outcomes as follows:

•        Saved over 300,000 Children from every day diarrhea diseases

•        Gained over 129,100 School Attendance Days for Children

•        Contributed in reducing endemic cases of gastro-enteritis in the region

 We are grateful to Global Giving and all our benefactors and donors who use its platform to reach us with the critical funds required in achieving our objectives. Please accept our warm gratitude and appreciation. Please kindly do not get bored or fatigued in supporting project - Give Safe Drinking Water - Save a Child from Dying!

Thank You!

Beyond household gains, and the allied opportunities being appropriated by micro-entrepreneurs as filter artisans and technicians etc are those of market groups emerging as filter distributors in the Niger Delta.

Rural markets represent a critical segment of rural life in Nigeria. Asides providing commercial outlets for rural goods vital in fighting rural poverty, they provide rural folks a place for social networking and meetings. However, these markets receive limited priorities by government especially in the provision of basic amenities like safe water supplies and clean communal or shared toilets.

This approach mobilizes and motivates traders to invest in their own WASH infrastructure in a manner devoid of external hardware subsidy. The promotion of self-sufficiency rather than dependency is a key component of the approach as it focuses on the development of sustainable services rather than the external provision of infrastructure. Also, as a decision-support action-based tool our current initiative primarily uses a combination of participatory rural appraisal (PRA) techniques and related seven- step participatory approach similar to those used in Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation (PHAST) to facilitate community planning and action.

The seven steps are: Problem identification, problem analysis, planning for solutions, selecting options, planning for new facilities and behaviour change, planning for monitoring and evaluation and participatory evaluation. It works on the premise that as traders gain awareness of their water , sanitation and hygiene situations through participatory activities, they are empowered to develop and carry out their own plans to improve this situation within a timeline. The plans adopted may include construction or purchase and management of new physical facilities over the long term as well as safer individual and collective hygiene behaviours. Our initiative utilises specifically designed tools comprising of a series of photographs that depicts disgusting local market situations; connecting it with optimistic scenarios of healthier people, cleaner environments and adequate water supplies and wealth creation for all in the markets.

By focusing on providing traders and buyers  with an effective and healthy buying and selling environment and changing the hygiene behaviour of market people, this initiative mainstreams the ability of a coterie of people – adults, children, girls, boys, men and women who come to the market to act as change agents within a community or conduits for carrying those messages far beyond the market walls, bringing lasting improvements not only to their personal well-being, but also to that of the family and the wider community.