Rusororo Community Well, Rwanda

Project Snapshot

Country: Rwanda

GPS Coordinates:
  Latitude -2.253000
  Longitude 29.692500

Impact:
  Total Served: 500

Status:  Completed (What's This?)

Completion Date (or estimate): 10/30/2012

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Upon completion of the project, our partner in the field reports...

When the team arrived, community members were utilizing a water source located one kilometer away from the community that was unable to meet all of their water needs. Because of this, families were suffering from malaria, diarrhea and severe dehydration. Most community members earn a living by farming and selling their excess produce at nearby markets or by teaching at the nearby school. The community signed an MOU for the purpose of agreement between the community and Living Water, outlining the community's responsibilities and ownership of the well. The plan for sustainability for this site is to talk to the community people and discuss how to handle the well by putting the management that will handle the issues that will meet, either broken or any other problem. Plus this well is to be visited by LWI's operations and maintenance teams 3 to 4 times every year to ensure functionality. The testimony or story of the well is comparison of the new water and old one. People are very happy that they now have clean water which is reducing the diseases that they had because of the dirty water. A community member stated, "Many thanks to the people who managed to provide for us this clean water God bless you." The site called Rusororo belongs to a secondary school, called "SM Secondary School", which is located near the campus of "College Adventiste de Gitwe". When Philip, our Sustainability Coordinator, went to scout the site the villagers told him the name of the village and he didn't write down the name of the school (SMSS). Hence, the name "Rusororo". They plan on upgrading this hand pump to a submersible electric pump.

The LWI Rwanda team had an opportunity to meet with forty-four year old community member and farmer, Leonald Nsabimana, who stated, "The new water is clean compared to the old one. This water is good to the people; now we are so happy."

During the hygiene education, the LWI Rwanda team addresses: Hand washing, how to properly transport and store water, disease transmission and prevention, how to maintain proper care of the pump, as well as signs and symptoms of dehydration and how to make Oral Rehydration Solution. All of these lessons are taught in a participatory method to help community members discover ways to improve their hygiene and sanitation choices, and implement community driven solutions.

Project Photos

Recent Project Updates

10/30/2012: Rusororo Well Completed

We are excited to report that a new well has been completed for the community of Rusororo, Rwanda.  We just posted a report from the field including GPS coordinates and some pictures from the project site

10/18/2012: A Brief Project Update

We are told by our partner that Project updates are on their way; we expect them in the next few weeks.  We'll be sure to pass them along as soon as we can.