One Kind Act Rainwater Harvesting Tanks
Rainwater Harvesting Tanks
Our partner schools are located in remote disadvantaged villages where there is no water supply. There is not enough water to meet the schools drinking, cleaning and cooking needs! Students can’t wash their hands or flush the toilet which contributes to the spread of disease.
The water that local residents and school staff manage to collect is often groundwater. However, in the Arusha region, groundwater is hard to come by and is naturally high in fluoride - over 5 times the WHO recommended level! It poses a risk to primary school-aged children’s teeth, bones and brain development.
Our partner schools want their students to be able to focus on their learning without the worry of whether there will be enough to drink that day.
Thankyou One Kind Act!
In October 2019 One Kind Act awarded Made With Hope £13,280 to address this issue. This grant funded 21 new rainwater harvesting tanks across 4 schools, creating a rainwater harvesting capacity of over 100,000 litres! These new tanks have benefited over 1,400 students.
At our partner school Mshikamano , Water was a top priority of the community and teachers and we are so grateful to One Kind Act for supporting this project. 316 Students no longer need to bring water from home. The school is now able to cook school lunches everyday and has enough water for handwashing.
The impact:
Mshikamano
Water Committees at our partner schools have been established to support the ongoing maintenance of the tanks. The Mshikamano Committee Water , made up of parents, local government officials, teachers, governors and student representatives met on the 20th of February and invited Hussein, our representative in Arusha, to discuss the progress of the project. Prior to this, the committee had partnered with the village government to organise a community-wide meeting, in which community members agreed to contribute 7,000 TSH each (£2) towards the cost of fencing the tanks to make them more secure . This will greatly enhance the tanks longevity and sustainability in the community.
Maweni
Maweni primary is located in an extremely dry area. Bringing water to the school has been a long-time ambition of Headmaster Kashota and the community, and so this has been a top priority for our partnership. Thanks to One Kind Act, we have installed 8 x 5000L tanks and guttered the school buildings. This gives the school an additional 40,000L of storage capacity.
This doesn’t just provide the school with safe and plentiful drinking water, but also enables handwashing, cleaning of the dangerously dirty toilet block and flushing. The provision of water also supports other projects such as the Menstrual Hygiene Menstrual Hygiene Management project, making the toilets more period friendly.
CHETI
At CHETI high fluoride levels in the water pose a risk to school-aged children because it can weaken teeth, cause skeletal damage such as osteoarthritis and has been linked to developmental issues.
Before rainwater harvesting tanks were installed across CHETI Primary and Secondary schools, drinking water was drawn from the Arusha mains and delivered by tractor. We tested this water and it had high fluoride levels of 7.6 mg/L, significantly above WHO’s recommendations of a maximum 1.5 mg/L. OKA funding allowed us to add a further seven tanks to the CHETI compound, in addition to the 14 tanks we had funded through 2019 World Water Day. CHETI Primary and Secondary Schools now have enough water to fulfil all their water needs.
We were delighted to confirm through laboratory testing that the water supplied by the new tanks at CHETI is officially fluoride free!
What the future holds:
The One Kind Act rainwater harvesting tanks was the first project CHETI NGO Community Development Worker Hussein oversaw.
“Supporting delivery of the rain water harvesting project in our 3 partner schools for the first time, has been a great opportunity for me to see how One Kind Act, through their donation, are going to save 1000s lives of young boys and girls in these schools. These schools did not have access to enough safe, clean water but through OKAs donation, these schools are now having 40k+L of water.”
Now there are reliable water sources in the schools many other projects are now possible. Water-enabled projects that we are planning include:
Handwashing stations
Hygiene-awareness training
Reusable sanitary products for girls
Eco Kitchens
We could not even imagine these new projects before, but we can now start to plan because of One Kind Act’s support.
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Thank you!
By Eve Stanislawski
Project Volunteer