Ndwika Girls Secondary School water well drilling project
THE NEED
Ndwika Girls Secondary School is an advanced education centre for girls aged 17 to 20, with 900 students currently attending. Before the start of the water project, they faced a lot of problems due to inadequate water supply. Their local water source of Chiwambo natural springs often failed to produce enough water during the summer months, leading to inadequate water supply to the school. This also led to other problems like a shortage of water for fishing activities as well as for domestic purposes like washing clothes, bathing, kitchen usage or to irrigate the school gardens. Not only this but it also wasted a considerable amount of time for students who often had to search for water, which heavily impacted their academic performance and especially their extracurricular activities.
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OBJECTIVES
A grant was given to Ndwika Girls Secondary School to create a water well. This was aimed at relieving the school during times of water rationing at the local water source, as well as distributing water to areas that were before deprived of regular access like the school’s kitchens and dormitories.
UPDATE
The project has greatly helped the school with its water availability challenge. If the Chiwambo water source has to be rationed, the school can now pump water from the new well. Water quality was determined to be safe for human use after testing by the Dar es Salaam Institute of Technology, and has been open for use since the 30th of September.
This has helped reduce the amount of time students have spent looking for water, allowing them to focus their time and attention on curricular and extracurricular activities that help their studies. The water pump has also helped supply water to irrigate the school’s gardens, allowing for more plants and vegetables to be grown. Fishing activities have also improved, with the availability of water increasing the amount that are able to harvested due to the reduction in the death of the fish. The school kitchen has been helped a lot, with there now being enough water for cooking purposes as well as for students to wash their clothes.