Water Project

Hello friends,

On behalf of Darfur Women Network, I would like to share with you our excited news. Thank  you so much for your strong support.

During the rainy season and the end of the harvest the refugees suffer a shortage of water. They have to clean the wells to be able to get water. Cleaning up the wells means the refugees would designate volunteers to tie them with a rope around the waist of a young man.

The volunteers would be sent carefully down 12 meters in the depth of the wells. The container and shelf should follow them to the well. They should clean up the wells and would remove the dirt and trash by pulling the rope. The refugees around the well will pull the volunteer out of the well. Afterwards, the well would be ready for serving our refugees community.

Challenges: Risky and dangerous for the volunteers who would allow people to hold the unsafe cord to get them deep into the wells. In addition, it is painful to be pulled out with a rope, they have no safety tools.

Solution: Provide safety tools to those who clean up the wells.  

Proposed solution of our first stage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzYtoZPOM54

Accomplishment of the first stage of the project: providing safety tools:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HO33r4r50E6E0bMx0H1fwlEIDFLDMaTe/view

Hello friends,

The Darfur Women Network,DWN, wish you Happy Holidays!

We at, Darfur Women Network, want to thank you for your continued support for our #EndofYearCampaign through #GlobalGiving. We still have a ways to go to meet our year end goal, so we wanted to take a moment to share more info about our Water Project that is the focus of this year's campaign.

What is DWN Goal for the Water Project? 
To provide clean drinking water with no risks to the Darfur refugees for safety and health.

How Long Will the Project Take? 
The project comprises of two parts: Short-Term Solution: Clean the water wells and Long-Term Solution: Cover the water wells

What is the Water Project?
The water wells were built in the heart of the valley in Touloum. During the rainy season, the rain washes grass, wood, and other trash from the high level lands to carry them to the valley. Therefore, the drinking wells fill with trash and sand because they aren’t covered. The process of burning trash and sand in the wells takes place many times a week or a month based on the density of the rain.

Now that the rainy season and harvest have ended, the refugees suffer a shortage of water. They have to clean the wells for water to survive. Cleaning the wells means the refugees designate volunteers to tie them with a rope around the waist of the volunteer. The volunteers carefully send the designated cleaner down 12 meters into the depths of the wells with a container and shelf to follow him down. The goal is to remove enough debris from the water. After the cleaning process, refugees hoist both the tools and cleaning volunteer out of the well. Now the well would be ready for serving our refugee community.

Challenges: Right now this process is both risky and dangerous. Volunteer cleaners rely on a rope and the physical strength of others available to hoist them in and out of the wells rather than using a harness and safety gear. It's also pretty painful to be lowered and pulled by a rope. If that weren't bad enough, they even have poisonous snakes that interfere with cleaning time, which isn't good for anyone involved.

Solution: This is the only water source and clean water is imperative to survival. We can help at least make this a safer and more reliable process. Darfur Women Network wishes to provide safety tools including harnesses, boots/gloves, cords, helmets/glasses, etc. to the cleaning volunteers. Our efforts will make this process much faster, more efficient and much safer. It is the only sources of water there.

In addition to cleaning, we also need to cover the wells which will reduce the amount of debris collecting in the wells. Sometimes the wind can cover wells with so much dirt, the wells are completely buried.

DWN are seeking help to generate ideas for our long-term solution. If you have any ideas, experience or interest in helping us with the Water Project, please let's know!

The video below provides an inside look at what getting water in Touloum looks like.

Shortage of Water Project:Please visit: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/water-project/