Water Blogged

Mtitu Primary School is located in Kilolo district, Iringa, Tanzania. The school has an enrollment of 515 students (278 girls/237 boys) and 11 teachers/staff members. As with many villages and schools in Iringa, the lack of safe water for Mtitu School is a major problem.

BEFORE:
Students were expected to fetch water, several times per day, from streams or a hand-dug well almost 5 km’s away. The streams around the village are shared with livestock and are very polluted. Students typically ended up spending more time fetching water and recovering from waterborne illness than they did studying, which led to poor performance on their exams. The school desperately needed access to safe water in order to meet their needs for drinking, washing hands, cooking and cleaning.

AFTER:
The overall objective of this project was to provide access to clean water for the students at Mtitu Primary School. Our implementing partner, St. Paul Partners (SSP), successfully installed a borehole well on the school grounds! This will ensure students have access to enough safe water which will lead to more time in the classroom studying. Plentiful safe water will also have a significant impact on the health of the students, teachers and neighbors around the village.

SSP representatives traveled to Mtitu and worked with the school administration to identify a suitable location for a borehole well that would have a hand pump. This 30M deep well was drilled, flushed, and tested to the standards of St. Paul Partners. The project included the furnishing of all materials, labor and supervision required during drilling. To ensure the sustainability of the project, WASH training was conducted at the Mtitu Primary School. Students and staff were trained on how to use the hand pump and to ensure its sustainability. This training aimed to strengthen the school’s and village’s sense of ownership towards the project. The school leaders promise to take good care of the well for many years to come.