How much is 80 litres of water? If you live in an older house, it’s a 4-minute shower. If you have water-efficient shower, then it’s an 8-minute shower. It might also be all of the water you use to wash dishes for a day. If you carry your water from a well—it’s 4 jerrycans worth of water. (I can carry one jerrycan on my head per trip, but I’m not very graceful when I do).
Or if you live in West Mosul, Iraq, it’s the amount of clean water you can access every day now that you couldn’t have before. It’s clean water every person in your family can use to drink, to wash their hands, to shower. It’s water you don’t have to carry, or don’t have to carry so far.
The Restoring Water Supply in West Mosul project (phase 3) ran in 2020 with $237,000 from the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It reached 72,500 people with clean water.
What changed?
- More people got clean water. 72,500 people got 80 litres of clean water a day.
- People feel healthier. 58% of people said that water-born diseases dropped. At the end of the project, people were 3 times more likely to feel that their water was safe and they had fewer diseases.
- Customers are satisfied. 99% of people were satisfied with the project, hygiene services, and hygiene kits. 31% of people said services were of high quality, and 69% said services were satisfactory.
- People’s lives improved. 78% of people said that the project helped them make positive changes in their lives. 31% of people say it helped them financially.
- More people practice good hygiene. 22% more people know about when and how to wash their hands. 5.4 times more people are disposing of solid waste safely.
How did it happen?
- Consult with local government. By aligning with local needs assessments, the project was able to provide services that 99% of people say were highly needed, and 99% say came at a good time.
- Invest in infrastructure. The project helped build and repair a water treatment plant and water pumping stations. They also helped repair garbage trucks.
- Think long term. The project trained people to maintain the new water plants. That means that the system keeps working and local people have jobs to keep the system online. The project also used cash-for-work to help employ 27 people as part of the project.
- Get people information in ways that work for them. 97% of people said that house-to-house visits were the best way to promote good hygiene behaviors. They thought the COVID-19 information was the most useful part of the education campaigns.
- Provide supplies. The project distributed 3,000 COVID-19 hygiene kits.
Want to learn more?
Check out the evaluation.