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Happy World Water Day!
Zambia: Finish the Job
In December, we announced that we had finished the funding needed from U.S. donors to reach everyone, everywhere World Vision works in the entire country of Rwanda with basic clean water access. In fact, we made this bold statement in our December newsletter:
"To our U.S. donors: Please do not send any money to World Vision for our plan to reach everyone, everywhere we work with basic clean water access in Rwanda. It is not often that a non-profit asks you not to send money, but we're all about working ourselves out of a job, particularly with regard to reaching everyone, everywhere we work with clean water, about 50 million people between 2016-2030."
In February, we announced that we fulfilled our global commitment to reach 20 million people with clean water since 2016 and today – on World Water Day – we're announcing that we have a new plan to finish the job in Zambia. Establishing this track record of results builds confidence that we will solve the global water crisis.
While it's never easy doing work in the developing world, we've chosen to play to our strengths in picking Zambia as the next country because we have a strong track record of results over the previous 10 years. In fact, from 2011-2020, we reached an average of 150,000 people with clean water each year for a total of 1.5 million people. In order to finish the job of reaching everyone, everywhere we work in Zambia with basic clean water access, we need to reach an average of 160,000 people a year for 5 years for a total of 800,000 people. Importantly, we will need to reach even deeper into rural areas to finish the job. You might even say that we’re marching off the map.
This is doable and we have strong confidence that we will get the job done. Zambia is a low-income, land-locked country in Southern Africa that ranks near the bottom of the human development index (#143). The population of 17 million people includes about 7 million people that lack access to clean water. So, by reaching another 800,000 people with clean water, we'll make a huge impact on the entire country. We are targeting 122 wards (Zambian equivalent of a county) in 9 out of 10 provinces (Zambian equivalent of a state).
It's often said, and true, that good development starts with clean water and that to address extreme poverty you must address the global water crisis. By providing clean water to everyone in all the places we work in Zambia, we'll empower people to transform their lives and the result will be that their health, education, dignity, nutrition, and livelihoods will dramatically improve.
We know from our World Vision 14 country evaluation conducted by the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina, that there are also great needs for improved water, sanitation, and hygiene in schools and health care centers in Zambia. This evaluation showed that only 1 in 5 schools and only 1 in 8 healthcare facilities had functional hand-washing stations in the areas where we work in Zambia. Only one-quarter of schools and only one-third of healthcare facilities had even basic sanitation. So, while we're doing the work to provide households with clean water, we'll also reach the schools and healthcare facilities with high levels of service for water, sanitation, and hygiene. During this 5-year period, we'll reach 350 schools and 125 healthcare facilities. We will provide higher levels of service than we did previously, including flush toilets, hand-washing facilities in all areas of patient care in the healthcare facilities, and waste management to prevent the spread of infectious disease.
In this plan to finish the job in Zambia, we'll increase by about 10-fold the number of water points that we're providing - installing more than 40,000 water points in a 5-year period. Why are we doing this? Researchers from Stanford University recently examined the impact of providing higher levels of water service in communities reached by World Vision in Zambia. In some communities, World Vision had provided basic water access by constructing a borehole with a handpump that was within 30 minutes roundtrip of households - while in other communities, we provided solar-powered piped water systems that are able to provide larger volumes of water closer to people’s homes. The researchers found significant additional benefits from the piped water systems including higher water use, which will mean improved hygiene and increased size of gardens, which will then mean better nutrition and income. There was time savings of an average 200 hours per year per household which mostly accrued to women and girls.
To finish the job in Zambia will require us to raise $50 million from U.S. donors, 60% of the total budget. This amount will be leveraged to provide the additional 40% needed. Our goal is to raise the funds over 4 years and finish the work in 5 years. We hope you'll consider joining this world changing effort.
Please watch this new video that captures the plan to Finish the Job in Zambia. You can read more about our plans here.
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WHO Cooperation Agreement
World Vision and the World Health Organization (WHO) have recently signed a unique cooperation agreement that formalizes and builds on a history of cooperation. World Vision and WHO share a common goal to improve health by delivering improved water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) to vulnerable populations. Through this agreement, we will focus on improving WASH in healthcare facilities and improving water quality. We will also share case studies and best practices to help the entire WASH sector improve with the goal that everyone, everywhere has access to clean water, good hygiene, and dignified and safe sanitation.
“We are grateful that World Vision is driving towards 100% community coverage to improve health impacts. Our cooperation agreement points to a rich future in areas such as work in healthcare facilities and water quality by leveraging World Vision’s on-the-ground implementation and WHO’s supporting linkages with governments”
Bruce Gordon, Coordinator for Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Health at the WHO
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UNC Partnership
World Vision and the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC) have recently completed a 6-year partnership and are announcing a new 5-year partnership aligned to our new 2021-2025 business plan. The previous collaboration included a series of research studies and a 14-country evaluation looking at the effectiveness of our water, sanitation and hygiene service programs and how we can continue to improve our approaches. The collaboration with the Water Institute has led us to refine the focus and prioritization of our programs, leading to more impact at the community level and the partnership is influencing how the entire sector can solve the global water and sanitation crisis. At its core, this partnership is about learning – learning from our field experiences on how we can progressively improve service delivery in some of the most challenging environments in a sustainable, resilient, and cost-effective manner. We are confident that this new partnership will allow us to continue to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our work to bring transformation in rural communities, schools, and healthcare facilities.
“World Vision stands apart in their commitment to  self-evaluation and reflection and to progressively improving service delivery to those that are hardest to reach.”
Dr. Aaron Salzberg, Director of the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
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