Jivovoli Community 2

A normal day in Jivovoli involves people waking up before the sunrise to get chores done. They try to make ends meet by depending on odd jobs to keep their families running. Women are seen doing the most work around the village, since most of the men are away in the cities to find jobs.

Women earn extra income by gardening to sell vegetables in the local market. In the evenings when children return home from school, they help their mothers by fetching water and washing utensils before they focus on their homework.

Water

Wamunala Spring is a main source of water for Jivovoli Community. It serves 40 different families, suppling the water they need for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and watering gardens during the dry months.

Wamunala Spring pools above the ground, appearing as a puddle, where containers are filled by dunking them under the murky surface. This source is open to contamination, especially during the rains when dirt, chemicals, and feces are washed into the water. We could even see bugs swimming around in the water.

People here suffer from typhoid and drinking this water.

Sanitation

Most of the fetched water is stored outside in the same uncovered containers. Even if the water people fetched was clean, it would be dirty because of poor storage habits.

Less than half of households have a pit latrineThose we observed lack both roofs and doors, the floors are unstable, and users face the risk of falling into the pit.

There's nowhere to wash hands, and there aren't many other sanitation facilities either; just a few clotheslines strung up between the dozens of families living here.

There's lots of garbage thrown in the back of compounds. The litter blows about the community.

"We are not doing so well as a community on matters concerning water, sanitation and hygiene. We end up using a lot of money in treating diseases and doing less on trying to prevent them. Therefore, we would be glad of any help rendered to get us out of this predicament that has befallen us," Mr. Henry Masiza said.

Here's what we're going to do about it:

Training

Community members will attend hygiene and sanitation training for at least two days. This training will ensure participants have the knowledge they need about healthy practices and their importance. The facilitator plans to use PHAST (Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation), CLTS (Community-Led Total Sanitation), ABCD (Asset-Based Community Development), group discussions, handouts, and demonstrations at the spring. One of the most important topics we plan to cover is the handling, storage, and treatment of water. Having a clean water source will be extremely helpful, but it is useless if water gets contaminated by the time it’s consumed. Hand-washing will also be a big topic.

Training will also result in the formation of a committee that will oversee operations and maintenance at the spring. They will enforce proper behavior around the spring and delegate tasks that will help preserve the site, such as building a fence and digging proper drainage. The fence will keep out destructive animals, and the drainage will keep the area’s mosquito population at a minimum.

Sanitation Platforms

On the final day of training, participants will select five families that should benefit from new latrine floors.

Training will also inform the community and selected families on what they need to contribute to make this project a success. They must mobilize locally available materials, such as bricks, clean sand, hardcore, and ballast. The five families chosen for sanitation platforms must prepare by sinking a pit for the sanitation platforms to be placed over. All community members must work together to make sure that accommodations and food are always provided for the work teams.

Spring Protection

Protecting the spring will ensure that the water is safe, adequate and secure. Construction will keep surface runoff and other contaminants out of the water. With the community’s high involvement in the process, there should be a good sense of responsibility and ownership for the new clean water source.

Fetching water is predominantly a female role, done by both women and young girls. Protecting the spring and offering training and support will therefore help empower the female members of the community by giving them more time and efforts to engage and invest in income-generating activities.

This project is a part of our shared program with Western Water And Sanitation Forum (WEWASAFO). Our team is pleased to provide the reports for this project (formatted and edited for readability) thanks to the hard work of our friends in Kenya.

Project Updates

July, 2020: COVID-19 Prevention Training Update at Jivovoli Community, Wamunala Spring

Our teams are working on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Join us in our fight against the virus while maintaining access to clean, reliable water.

We are carrying out awareness and prevention trainings on the virus in every community we serve. Very often, our teams are the first (and only) to bring news and information of the virus to rural communities like Jivovoli, Kenya.

We trained more than 13 people on the symptoms, transmission routes, and prevention of COVID-19. Due to public gathering concerns, we worked with trusted community leaders to gather a select group of community members who would then relay the information learned to the rest of their family and friends.

We covered essential hygiene lessons:

- Demonstrations on how to build a simple handwashing station

- Proper handwashing technique

- The importance of using soap and clean water for handwashing

- Cleaning and disinfecting commonly touched surfaces including at the water point.

We covered COVID-19-specific guidance in line with national and international standards:

- Information on the symptoms and transmission routes of COVID-19

- What social distancing is and how to practice it

- How to cough into an elbow

- Alternative ways to greet people without handshakes, fist bumps, etc.

- How to make and properly wear a facemask.

During training, we installed a new handwashing station with soap near the community’s water point, along with a sign with reminders of what we covered.

Due to the rampant spread of misinformation about COVID-19, we also dedicated time to a question and answer session to help debunk rumors about the disease and provide extra information where needed.

We continue to stay in touch with this community as the pandemic progresses. We want to ensure their water point remains functional and their community stays informed about the virus.

Water access, sanitation, and hygiene are at the crux of disease prevention. You can directly support our work on the frontlines of COVID-19 prevention in all of the communities we serve while maintaining their access to safe, clean, and reliable water.

September, 2019: Giving Update: Jivovoli Community, Wamunala Spring

A year ago, your generous donation helped Jivovoli Community in Kenya access clean water.

There’s an incredible community of monthly donors who have come alongside you in supporting clean water at Wamunala Spring in Jivovoli. Month after month, their giving supports ongoing sustainability programs that help this community maintain access to safe, reliable water. Read more…

July, 2018: Jivovoli Community Has Clean Water!

Jivovoli Community now has clean water! Wamunala Spring has been transformed into a flowing source of clean water thanks to your donation. The spring is protected from contamination, five sanitation platforms have been provided for the community, and training has been done on sanitation and hygiene.

New Knowledge

Mr. Sammy Munala, secretary of the water user committee elected to care for Wamunala Spring was our contact person as we planned for hygiene and sanitation training in Jivovoli. The village elder helped the training officers to invite people from the households that fetch water from that source ensuring that all groups, men, women, and youth were well represented.

Every sub-village sent representatives from both genders just as we had requested. The young, youthful, middle-aged and old were all present in the meeting which means that the message was going to be shared by people of all age groups.

We covered several topics including leadership and governance; operation and maintenance of the spring; healthcare; family planning; immunizations; the spread of disease and prevention. We also covered water treatment methods, personal care like handwashing, environmental hygiene, hygiene promotion, and many other things.

All participants got involved in the training. They willingly volunteered to do demonstrations and urged one another to take good care of their water source.

"I have not been practicing good hygiene because of ignorance but now that I've been taught I will ensure my body stays clean to avoid those infections we were taught about," Mr. Henry Masiza said.

Sanitation Platforms

Sanitation platform concrete dries

All five sanitation platforms have been installed. These five families are happy about this milestone of having a private latrine of their own and are optimistic that people will no longer leave waste outdoors. We are continuing to encourage families to finish building walls and roofs over their new latrine floors.

Spring Protection

Community members provided all locally available construction materials, e.g bricks, wheelbarrows of clean sand, wheelbarrows of ballast, fencing poles and gravel. Men and women lent their strength to the artisan to help him with manual labor. Accommodations and meals were provided for the artisan, too.

Community contributes to spring protection

The spring area was excavated to create space for setting the foundation of polyethylene, wire mesh and concrete. After the base had been set, both wing walls and the headwall were set in place using brickwork. The discharge pipe was fixed low in place through the headwall to direct the water from the reservoir to the drawing area.

Digging the drainage channel

As the wing walls and headwall were curing, the stairs were set and ceramic tiles were fixed directly below the discharge pipe. This protects the concrete from the erosive force of the falling water and beautifies the spring.

The process of plastering the headwall and wing walls on both sides reinforces the brickwork and prevents water from the reservoir from seeping through the walls and allows pressure to build in the collection box to push water up through the discharge pipe.

The source area was filled up with clean stones and sand and covered with a polyethylene membrane to eliminate any potential sources of contamination. It took about two weeks of patience for the concrete to dry.

"This spring is very beautiful. I used to covet the spring at Gideon Asonga but now I'm happy that we have one of our own," Mr. Henry Jideveyi said.

"We will no longer slide and fall in the water and we will no longer carry jugs or mugs to use for drawing water. The spring you have constructed for us has made it very easy to draw water."

April, 2018: Jivovoli Community Project Underway

Dirty water from Wamunala Spring is making people in Jivovoli Community sick. Thanks to your generosity, we’re working to install a clean water point and much more. Since actual construction is starting a little later than planned, we’ve moved the expected completion date back to 8/31.

Get to know your community through the narrative and pictures we’ve posted, and read about this water, sanitation and hygiene project. We look forward to reaching out with more good news!