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Big Changes Underway in the Way We Provide Clean Water
World Vision’s Global Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) business plan for 2021-2025 has some big changes compared to our previous business plans. We will continue to reach one new person with clean water every 10 seconds but the way we’ll provide the water is changing pretty dramatically.
In the past, World Vision’s WASH team would dig a deep borehole with a drilling team. After testing the water to ensure it met World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines for clean water, our team would then install a handpump. This solution worked well to provide clean water for rural communities of an average population of 250 people. Any more people than that and people would have to wait in line for the water. Going back to our first business plan, this was about 90% of the way we provided clean water.
Boreholes with handpumps will only be 3% of what we do in the next 5 years. So, how will we reach the 15 million people with clean water between 2021-2025? The pie-chart below shows the percentages of how we’ll provide clean water.
Specifically, we will provide 5,569 wells with handpumps, 56,692 community taps, and 146,737 on-premise household water connections. Through this approach, we’re increasing the level of service that we’re providing to families. Piped water at the household level relieves women and girls of the burden of hauling water even over relatively short distances. A recent study by Stanford University showed that there was a time-savings of an average 200 hours per year per household. The household connections also result in hygiene improvements by empowering households to improve cleaning practices due to increased water availability. In direct response to COVID-19 and other epidemics, piped water to the household also helps households reduce exposure to diseases spread by sharing community taps. We know that household level water connections also improve water quality by reducing microbial contamination of the water during transport. And they result in better nutrition and income because of increased size of gardens due to the ease of irrigation of crops.
As we built the WASH business plan in the 41 countries in which we work, we also mapped out the type of water systems that we will provide. The pie-chart below shows that the majority of the water will be provided by solar powered systems following by rainwater harvesting and protected spring catchment.
While in the past, our donors would typically fund a borehole with a handpump, now those funds are typically providing a solar-powered, piped water system taking clean water to community or household taps. What has not changed with this new business plan is that World Vision continues to provide clean water, sanitation, and hygiene to one person for $50. While we’re increasing the level of service, providing clean water through World Vision remains one of the very best investments to transform lives.
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Big Check for a Big Goal
Thank you to Gerry and Jennifer Rogers for a $1 million gift to our Finish the Job Rwanda effort. Gerry and Jennifer are helping give purpose to the employees of Gerry’s business, “Mr. Rogers Windows” by sharing how we’re transforming lives together with clean water. Gerry and Jennifer made their pledge to World Vision prior to completion of the funding for the Rwanda water effort and we recently were able to celebrate together.
Left to right: Dr. Greg Allgood and Catherine Brazinski of World Vision and donors Gerry and Jennifer Rogers
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Prayer Requests
- Pray for the stamina and safety of World Vision’s 1,200 WASH professionals, including our drilling teams that bring clean water to a community but work day after day in communities without clean water.
- Pray for our World Vision staff in India, particularly our WASH team, as they battle this tremendous COVID-19 outbreak.
- Pray for the continued success of our business plans so that together we can transform millions of lives and everyday get closer to our goal of reaching everyone, everywhere we work by 2030.
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