Summary
This project will provide safe drinking water and sanitation facilities for two primary schools in developing areas around Nakuru, Kenya.
Background
Since 1990, Lifewater (LI) and Lifewater Kenya (LWKE) have worked in partnership to help eradicate the water and sanitation crisis in Nakuru District, in the Rift Valley Province of Western Kenya.
Many of the schools in peri-urban and urban areas of Nakuru do not have access to safe water or adequate sanitation. In addition to the obvious serious health consequences, the lack of safe water poses particularly difficult challenges for women and girls. For example, at Ndarugu Primary School 27 female teachers share 1 latrine while more than 700 female students share a mere 8 latrines. This is a staggering 88 students per latrine, more than 3 times the Kenyan Government standard of 25 girls per latrine.
Severe diseases are associated with a lack of water and poor sanitation, including diarrhea, dehydration, trachoma, dysentery, and skin infections. These same diseases are responsible for the deaths of thousands of impoverished children each year.
The economic consequences of these diseases and deaths are a ripple effect: women must take care of the sick instead of attending to the fields, leading to poor diets and reduced income. Adolescent girls generally avoid school during their menstrual periods or when they are ill, leading to high absenteeism and low educational attainment. All of these factors conspire only to deepen poverty in the target areas.
The WASH program is an initiative to save lives and reduce suffering by providing safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene education to people who lack these basic services; Lifewater International and Lifewater Kenya aim at doing exactly that.
Providing access to sufficient quantities of safe water, the provision of facilities for a sanitary disposal of excreta, and introducing sound hygiene behaviors are of capital importance to reducing the burden of disease caused by these risk factors. A recent hygiene intervention study shows that diarrhea disease transmission in rural areas is reduced by promotion of safe drinking water, hand-washing, and dish-washing behavior.