Clean Water For The People of Kibumba
Thirty Thousand people walking 10 miles for water is Over!
Children walk up to 20 kilometers to fill one jerry can.
Now every home has a Sawyer filter & new water tanks open weekly.
Volcanic rock is embedded deep in Kibumba, making borehole drilling for clean, safe water impossible. However, from December to July, it rains often in Kibumba. Building rain catchment systems, including water collection tanks, spigots, and filtering, directly in the villages, is an incredibly sustainable way to provide access to ongoing clean, safe water.
Children used to walk twenty kilometers for a single jerry can of water.
Now we are helping them build hundreds of rain catchment systems.
Water is Basic (WiB) has been collaborating with the Africa-based organization, African Leadership & Reconciliation Ministries, Inc. (ALARM-Inc) on our WASH projects in the DRC for the past five years.
First, we provided 5,000 Sawyer Filters to all 5,000 households, removing water-borne diseases from their daily lives.
However, in the dry season, water to filter can be as far away as twenty kilometers. So local women and men are building long-lasting forty-year rain catchment systems, meaning water is available year-round. To date, we have built 56, and we are not letting up till clean water is an afterthought to these folks.
Laying a firm foundation.
Building the walls.
WHY WE THINK THIS IS SMART
WOMEN MAKE THINGS HAPPEN – Women care about water. They want their kids to be healthy and their daughters to be in school. That’s why the water committee in Kibumba is fifty percent female.
FROM TEMPORARY TO PERMANENT – Something as important as water should not rely on organizations that can potentially lose funding or pack up their bags. With our funding they know how to build tanks that will last for decades.
IT’S GOOD FOR THE LOCAL ECONOMY – It rains here, a lot! Kibumba can a breadbasket for all of Eastern DRC growing the food to fuel their future. Clean water means healthy workers in the fields, growing the food for the future.
IT’S SIMPLE – One rain catchment system provides water for several households. Easy to maintain. Easy to enjoy. That’s how water should be.
IT’S REPEATABLE - Once we built one, the rest are the same. One rain catchment tank every week, and before you know it, these folks won’t need us anymore.
