AquaFund - providing water for Ethiopia 2007 - 2008

The Amhara Region, Ethiopia

Achefer Woreda is within Amhara Regional state which is 517km from Addis Ababa and 58km from Bahir Dar. There are 40,432 people living in these six target kebales (parishes)

Our support for this project started in April 2007 Before this time only 6.6% of the community had access to water in this rural area, but even these water sources dry up from December to May. At these times women and girls are forced to travel long distances to fetch water that is unclean and unsafe. These girls don’t have the time to go to school as they spend most of their days on the long journey to collect water, wash clothes and cook.

WaterAid/Jenny Matthews

Also as a result of this lack of safe and adequate water supply and sanitation provision children in particular suffer from water-borne and poor sanitation related diseases. Illnesses caused by drinking dirty water and lack of sanitation are the biggest killer of children worldwide. Even if these children do not die from their illness they spend most of their time being unwell so are unable to attend school.

AquaFund and the Achefer Woreda Project

Aims

We are helping to increase people’s access to sustainable health and hygiene benefits through improvements in drinking water, sanitation and health.

We are also providing support to the community in the project area, strengthening their local capacity for a self sustained and gender sensitive water, hygiene and sanitation program. This project is aiming to reduce water borne diseases to below seventh in rank from the top ten diseases.

Currently people spend an average of 50 minutes queuing or fetching water, when the supply is available. The eventual aim of this project is to reduce this down to less than 15 minutes.

Successes

Thanks to our support, the following have been achieved during a 12-month period, helping transform lives in this rural community:

WaterAid/Jon Spaull

Water supply

11 stand point distributors
9 hand dug wells
9 cattle troughs
9 washing basins for clothes
3 community shower houses
20 fencing around water schemes
6 water quality tests
20 disinfections of water points

Sanitation

2550 pit latrines
1073 refuse disposal pits
438 fuel saving stoves

Hygiene promotion

3035 people benefited from sanitation and hygiene education
994 hand washing facilities in households

Community capacity building and ownership

100 new water and sanitation committee members were trained and 125 took a refresher course
22 community sanitation and hygiene promoters
40 new scheme caretakers and 60 took a refresher course

The 2007-2008 AquaFund project has enabled 8289 people to gain access to safe water and 16,539 people to gain access to effective sanitation.

ADSM and WaterAid thank all AquaFund clients for helping to make these achievements possible.

email: aquafund@adsm.com Tel: 01753 833880

A guaranteed minimum of £10,000 is paid to WaterAid Trading Limited which covenants all its taxable profits to WaterAid, a registered charity: number 288701 (England and Wales) and SC039479 (Scotland).