Water for Life: Integrated Program in the Sahel, Burkina Faso
Church World Service is working with partner, the Association for Peace and Solidarity, on an Integrated Water Development Program in the Sahel, the boundary zone in Africa between the Sahara Desert to the north and the more fertile region to the south. The goal is to create a model community-based water development program that can be replicated by other organizations and government structures, as well as promoted within national, regional, and global advocacy networks.
Access to water in rural Sahelian communities plays a determining factor in economic, health, livestock, and agricultural development. Villages targeted in this program currently are without a sufficient number of water points (modern boreholes or traditional cement wells) to get potable water. In these villages women and children are responsible for fetching household water along with other domestic duties. They walk miles each day in search of water – water that may carry waterborne diseases.
The focus for this first-year (FY 2007) pilot program in Burkina Faso includes improving availability and access to clean drinking water for at least 1,002 people in 300 households, and providing access to water for livestock and gardening. The project is in the village of Tansengo, some 100 miles northeast of the capital, Ouagadougou, in north-central Burkina Faso.
Recognized for its participatory method of development, as it works with and engages communities in their own development, APS has program experience in community mobilization, development of cooperatives, village water supply development, cereal bank creation, reforestation, soil recovery, and environmental education, including the recently concluded three-year SAWANA Environmental Program in Oubritenga province, supported by Church World Service and the Presbyterian Hunger Program.
Support for Church World Service helps make this program possible.
Updated 7/28/06
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