We want to introduce you to our partner communities in Ethiopia where 100% of your donations go to transform lives forever. At Run for Water, our development work is centred on how we can help our partner communities become their own champions of development. Here’s how we do that.
Partner Communities
BULUK
Population: 15000
Fresiweat
Population: 4750
This community is located in the Emba Alaje district of Southern Tigray. Like in all other rural communities in Ethiopia, the responsibility of fetching water is primarily placed on girls and women. It was an extremely hard task for young girls, old and pregnant women to walk long distances to the river or pond and carry home jerry cans weighing 50lbs. This burden has negatively affected girls and women’s participation in the social, economic, political and cultural spheres of their community life.
Together, we built a spring cap system and clean water is now flowing in Fresiweat for the first time ever!
Adiabuna
Population: 1820
Shallow well built 20 metres from the local school benefitting 620 students and 1200 community members. Going back to school is already stressful enough during a global pandemic, let alone with the added challenge of having no access to clean water. When students of Adiabuna came back to school in the fall of 2020, there was clean water flowing right by their classrooms! Parents and teachers have also taken the initiative to plant veggies and fruit trees in the school compound which the students will water and snack on during school.
Michriko
Population: 5600
Spring cap clean water system complete benefitting 5600 people. We also built latrines to prevent open defecation which has been causing easily preventable diseases like trachoma.
Salle
Population: 5456
Shallow well completed. The students at the local school were walking for 2km to a river during their break to get a drink of water.
Elibat
Population: 5314
Shallow well completed. Elibat is one of our partner communities with high number of children with disabilities. Living with disabilities in rural Ethiopian communities comes with a great deal of challenges including severely limited access to resources and facilities. This stresses the importance of making all our water points as easily accessible as possible.
Coffee growing communities in Bale zone
Population: 8996
In partnership with the communities of Basura, Bule, Wote, Adame, Haru, Biloya & Shifo, and the Costa Foundation, we built clean water points in nine schools.
The project is benefitting 3,685 girls by creating equal access to clean and safe water, sanitation and hygiene facilities and training them on Menstrual Hygiene Management. There are now gender segregated hand washing facilities and showers that ensure privacy. The number, location and design of school WASH facilities took into consideration the gender factor (gender mainstreaming) along with the cultural and religious context of the community. Part of the training has also been around ensuring equal representation and participation of women and girls in WaSH committees and clubs. School PTAs are oriented to plan and budget for dignity kits. Girls are trained on how to make reusable sanitary pads that are affordable and environmentally friendly.
ZENESHKA
Population: 1024
Zeneshka is located in the district of Alaje in the Tigray region. By end of 2018, only 54.5% of school age children were enrolled in the local school. Of those in school, many students became ill with waterborne diseases in 2019. In 2020, we completed a spring cap clean water system and a primary school which included bathrooms, a library and a playground.
GPS Coordinates: 12.893182, 39.306034
Bekyye
Population: 2,200
Bekyye is located in the Harana Buluk area of Oromia. Residents had no access to clean water. They were using the water from river and ponds for cooking, cleaning, drinking and animal care.
In 2019, we worked with them to develop a spring-cap clean water system.
WARABA
Population: 2175
The community was using a local river as the primary water source for drinking, cleaning, taking care of animals and cooking which caused chronic cycle of water borne diseases
In 2019, a spring-cap clean water s system was constructed with a 4km pipe bringing clean water into the centre of the community.
GPS Coordinates: 5.16521, 40.90183
Meda-Atsela
Population: 2616
The net enrolment rate in school was very low at 22%. The local school was no more than only two open air classrooms and no library or latrine. There was no potable water in the school and the community was using water from the local river and ponds. We constructed a shallow well and a new school with early childhood education building, latrines and a new library.
GPS Coordinates: 12.925113,39.539957
Adiarbaete
The community of Adiarbaeate is located in the Tigray region of Ethiopia and is on a very dry land. Girls and women had to walk for hours every day to find the next water source. We worked to build a shallow well within the community for clean water source.
Awash Kolati
The community of Awash Kolati is located in the Barbare district of Oromia region in Ethiopia. It is approximately 550 km south east of the capital, Addis Ababa. It is one of the coffee growing communities in the district with a large portion of the population living in absolute poverty, making it incredibly challenging for the community to improve quality and access to infrastructure and education.
For children who are able to go to school, the learning conditions are very challenging. Their classrooms are often made of sticks and mud. Rainy seasons make it worse as flood erodes the classrooms, putting a halt to classes. Due to the poor conditions of the classrooms, they are often under the risk of collapsing or its roof being taken away by the wind.
Our partnership with Awash Kolati in 2018 brought a combination of infrastructure development, teacher and community member capacity building and training, and provision of supplies. We built a spring water system for the school and community, two blocks of four classrooms, one early childhood education classroom, one library, and two blocks of 8 pit gender-segregated latrines (one each for boys and girls).
Sheni Kondala
Sheni Kondala is located in the rural Oromia region. This community had high drop out rates with girls at school because of early marriage and the domestic responsibilities girls have to take on such as collecting water from the river every day.
Before we constructed water points and a school, our partner agency, Imagine1Day, worked with the community to ensure everyone understood the significance of sending children to school. This work supported the establishment of school girls club which aimed at bringing all girls to school, support each other, discuss and find solutions to problems they may face. The club not only allows girls to come together to share ideas and opinions, but also provides a space for girls to talk about their health and wellbeing.
In November 2018, we welcomed clean water with them as well as new school buildings complete with latrines and a library.
Gora Bantu
The community of Gora Bantu is located in the Barbare district of Oromia region in Ethiopia. It is approximately 525 km south east of the capital, Addis Ababa.
Their source for drinking water was the nearby river which they used to share with their cattle and other domesticated animals. We visited them in November, 2018 to celebrate the flow of clean water for the first time in their lives.
Archived
Partner communities form earlier years are archived.
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