If you only had one litre of water a day, what do you do? In CARE Somalia, you build government systems to provide 16 times more water.
What is one litre of water? If you live in the US, 1 litre of water is 2 individual-sized bottles of water. If you go to Starbucks, it’s about 3 cups of coffee. If you’re in a refugee camp, it’s 7 percent of global humanitarian standards for the bare minimum of human necessity.
If you lived in some parts of rural Somalia, it was your total allotment of water for the whole day in 2013. 1 litre of water is unacceptable; it’s tragic.
Happily, that’s not where the story ends. In fact, by working with governments and communities to build water systems that last, families could access enough water for everyone to have at least 15 litres a day. With $1.9 million from the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development, CARE Somalia was able to reach 18,520 families between 2013-2016 in the Quenching the Thirst II project. They were also able to use what they learned to influence other humanitarian actors and shape the response to the El Nino crisis in 2016.
What did we accomplish?
- Families have 16 times more drinkable water: When the project started, families had between 2.5 and 7.5 liters of water a day for 8 people. By the end of the project, they had 120 litres—bringing them up to minimum humanitarian standard. That’s a minimum of 16 times more water.
- Water sources are more available, and last longer: Families in the areas CARE covered were 2.3 times more likely to have an improved water source than the national average in Somalia. According to the donor, 84% of these sources are ranked as sustainable.
- Communities can store water more safely: There was a three-fold increase in communities’ ability to store water safely to use later. That gives families a much needed resource in emergencies.
- The government plans to scale: The government has endorsed the Rural Water Management Policy that the project proposed and piloted in 31 communities.
- Emergency response was faster and more informed: When El Niño hit in the last year of the project, CARE and the Ministry of Water Resources used drought preparedness plans from the project to produce rapid assessments. That became the data source that many other humanitarian actors used to plan their drought response.
How did we get there?
- Move from law to action: The project used the 2012 Water Act as the base for its activities and analyzed the gaps in actually carrying out the provisions to focus its partnership with the local government. Then they could work together to meet goals the government already owned.
- Plan for scale: the project worked with local governments to test its approaches in a number of different contexts so that they government had the data it needed to plan for massive scaling up.
- Build evidence: The project conducted a gap analysis on what was working and wasn’t in local water systems and the national Water Act. Since government was involved in the joint research, they were more likely to support it and use it later.
- Think about sustainable financing: The project set up 31 public-private financing schemes as part of building or repairing infrastructure in 33 communities so that there was a plan in place to pay for repairs and continued service after the project closed.
- Build human resources: The project trained 35 technicians, and took government officials on an exchange visit to Kenya to make sure that there are local people ready and able to take over repair and management in the future.
Want to learn more?
Read the final evaluation.