PERSPECTIVES - The Ripple Effect of Clean Water
After 25+ years, FOTZC continues to focus on fundamentals. And whether you’re talking about health outcomes, education, or women’s empowerment, there’s nothing more fundamental than clean water.
In remote northern areas of Tanzania, the only water source might be miles away, and ridden with dangerous diseases like cholera or dysentery, or shared with wild animals.
Waterborne disease is so common in the region, in fact, that in 2015 doctors at the newly FOTZC-built medical dispensary reported that 4 out of 10 of the most common illnesses they saw resulted directly from tainted water: diarrhea, dysentery, eye infections, and typhoid fever. Now those diseases have virtually been eradicated in communities benefitting from FOTZC-sponsored boreholes.
Even without the obvious dangers of disease, the trek for water itself is fraught. Women and children often walk up to eight hours round-trip for water, meaning they’re unable to pursue an education or participate in the workforce. And the trip is often undertaken alone, through sparsely inhabited regions. Sexual assault and animal attacks are an ever-present threat.
To FOTZC, the need for better access to clean water was clearly the core issue.
A completed borehole near Sukenya Primary School is a perfect case study. Since clean water has been made available, absenteeism at the school—most often due to illness or students being forced to trek long distances for water—has plummeted by almost two-thirds.
The benefits are expected to spread to the entire community. Freed from the need to travel long distances for water, women can focus on creating and maintaining their own small businesses with the FOTZC-sponsored women's empowerment program.
Future projects will benefit, too. Currently, construction workers haul water hundreds of miles through rugged terrain. When water is available on site, however, this huge expense is eliminated, meaning every donated dollar goes further towards the kind of education, healthcare, and community empowerment projects FOTZC has been undertaking for over 25 years.
The 13 boreholes that FOTZC donors have funded ensure that communities can rely on one of the most fundamental resources around, one that has the possibility of rippling down into more and more positive outcomes: clean, safe, accessible water.
HOW CAN YOU HELP?
Click the link below to support FOTZC’s projects and be a force for good in Tanzania. You can choose to send your gift where it’s needed most, or designate one of FOTZC’s areas of focus: Education, Health, Water and Women’s Empowerment.
