Giving Update: JM Rembe Primary School

On a recent visit to JM Rembe Primary School, we saw how the school's appreciation of their water projects is visible in their efforts to put into practice what they were taught during the hygiene and sanitation training a year ago.

Notably, our teams observed that the school community has managed to keep their latrines, classrooms, and offices neat and clean thanks to the help of the available water from their rain tank. They have also thrown their weight into protecting the rain tank and latrines, giving no room for onlookers to question the ongoing infrastructural improvement in the school.

Therefore, we are fully convinced that JM Rembe primary school is headed for great heights.

School Cook Karen Awino shared with us how much these projects have changed not just her work at JM Rembe Primary, but also the lives of the students she supports.

"The tank is near the kitchen area and readily available for use. This gives me easy access to clean water, thus helping me do kitchen activities faster than when we lacked water. As cooks, we now prepare food faster and in good time compared to days when we had to wait for pupils to bring water from outside the school. Worse still, such water was always contaminated."

Karen Awino, School Cook

"I now find joy in my work, and [I] am not disturbed unlike before when water was brought from streams whose quality was not authenticated."

"In addition to that, my joy is [increased]...whenever I realize that our school children get time to read. In the past, they would be going to fetch water outside the school more often than not [and did not have extra time to read]".

Karen with Field Officer Erick

One of those students, 14-year-old William Otieno, can attest to these positive changes.

"Pupils no longer carry water to school daily because the tank gives us enough water to clean classrooms and latrines and also to be used for handwashing purposes. This has helped us improve on various levels of hygiene."

"The overall result is that it has led to good health status for school children and even staff. Cases of absenteeism have greatly reduced and this has led to [an] improvement in performance, seeing many of last year's eighth [grade] candidates join high schools with high marks."