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Monthly Newsletter: October 2020
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Global Handwashing Day: Promises Made Promises Kept

Today, October 15, is Global Handwashing Day.  World Vision reaches one new person with handwashing education every 10 seconds and our work to provide clean water is an essential part of handwashing.  A silver lining in this pandemic is that millions more people are being reached with a way to wash their hands  and understand why it’s important.  Happy Handwashing Day!

In this newsletter, we review progress on two major commitments made by World Vision and our partners – 1) our commitment to finish the job of providing everyone with clean water everywhere we work in the entire country of Rwanda and 2) our commitment with Grundfos to reach 2 million people with clean water during a five year period.  We make these commitments - or promises - to hold ourselves accountable and to be transparent about our progress.   

 

Rwanda Finish the Job

We are on track with our Rwanda commitment which we made for the period from 2018 to 2022.     

Our baseline year, 2018, we built the plan and reached about 69,000 people with clean water.  We developed a simple chart to track our progress in the 14 Districts within Rwanda in which we’re working, showing areas of great need in red where more than half of people do not have clean water, showing moderate progress areas in yellow, and success areas in green.  You can see that at the start of our efforts in 2018, there is great need with lots of districts in red.

map 2018-1

Our plan was to double the number of people reached from 2018 to 2019, to double the number of people again from 2019 to 2020, and then continue at the 2020 rate for 2021 and 2022.  Our results showed that we overachieved and more than doubled the number of people by reaching 159 thousand people with clean water.  We also see some districts going from red to yellow.  

2019 map

Our forecast for 2020, was to turn two of the Districts where we work to green and lower the number of red districts to just 3.  We were successful in finishing the job of providing clean water to everyone in two entire districts of Rwanda!  Our Rwanda team shared this 40 second video celebrating our success.

2020 map

By year 4, our plan is to have eliminated all of the red districts and turned half of the districts to green

2021 map

And by year 5, we’ll finished the job of reaching everyone everywhere we work in Rwanda with clean water.   

2022 map

In addition to our work to provide clean drinking water, we are providing sanitation and hygiene for the people of Rwanda.  A silver lining of the pandemic is that the government of Rwanda has put a priority on providing handwashing facilities and has asked World Vision to do much of the work.  We provided permanent handwashing facilities in 49 hospitals and are now reaching many of the rural health care facilities.  In order for schools and churches to reopen safely, they must have handwashing facilities and so we are installing handwashing facilities in 250 schools and 200 churches.  What a blessing that places of worship will be able to reopen because of our work.

To fund the work in Rwanda, we need to raise a total of $30 million from donors in the U.S. and we’re counting on another $20 million from other sources including the Rwandan government.  We’re on track with the funding from both sources.  In fact, the gap to finish the funding from US donors is now down to just $2.5 million.  Our goal is to finish the funding by Christmas.  What an amazing gift that will be for the people of Rwanda.  Please prayerfully consider if you’re able to finish the funding in Rwanda.

We’re very excited about the potential to finish the job in an entire country and believe it will be give us momentum to finish the job in other countries so we can fulfill our larger commitment of reaching everyone, everywhere we work by 2030 (about 50 million people between 2016-2030).

 

Grundfos Commitment

In 2015, Grundfos, the world’s largest water pump manufacturer, and World Vision -- the largest nongovernmental provider of clean water in the developing world – announced our goal to jointly provide clean water to 2 million people in sub-Saharan Africa over the next five years.  Today on Global Handwashing Day, despite the global pandemic and significant challenges, we are celebrating the achievement of this ambitious milestone.  We have exceeded our commitment by reaching more than 2,400,000 people with access to water. And we're making a new commitment today to go even higher by pledging to a new commitment to reach 4 million additional people by 2024.

During the COVID-19 crisis, the world is seeing the critical role that water and handwashing play in public health and in the resilience of communities, economies and the environment.  Water and handwashing are key to preventing and stopping the spread of the disease and the work that we are doing with Grundfos will provide life-saving benefits during this pandemic and will have a lasting impact on preventing the spread of other diseases.

The water systems that we are using are not just resilient in the face of the current crisis, but environmentally sound for the future.  To achieve this commitment, World Vision installed more than 1,000 Grundfos solar-powered pumps in sub-Saharan African villages in order to provide a sustained water supply.  Once World Vision digs a well that serves as a community’s water source, the solar-powered Grundfos pumps store the water in an overhead tank. Piping provided by the community is used to distribute the water to its residents.

World Vision already is an industry leader in this approach, having provided more than 200 of these mechanized water systems in villages around the world. The collaboration also will enable World Vision to keep the average cost of providing clean water and education on handwashing and sanitation to only $50 per person.  This video below shows how we’re working with Grundfos.

grundfos video-1

We’re grateful to our donor partners for enabling this amazing progress on these significant commitments.

We continue to be committed to providing clean water in the name of Jesus and thank you for being part of this journey with us.

Prayer Requests

  • Rejoice in His promises to us and for being with us as we complete our commitments to provide clean water in the name of Jesus.  As stated in Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV):  “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
  • Give thanks for the faithfulness of our donors and partners.  As stated in Matthew 10:42 (NLT): “And if you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded”.
  • Pray that we will obtain the resources needed to finish our work in Rwanda and can generate the momentum needed to go to additional countries. 
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