NGO's and water management



NGO’s are non-governmental organisations which are usually non-profit, international organisations. They help many of the unfortunate who find themselves in tough times, may it be disaster relief or just living in poverty. These many NGO’s help in various ways, including shelter, food and medicine. In this blog I will be looking at the ways in which NGO’s help women in Africa in regards to water and water collection, these NGO’s aim to promote equality through education.

Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980 and the water supply systems were based on a supply driven approach, rather than a sustainable approach. It was mainly women who paid the price if distant water supplies, many of them travelled great distance to obtain water for their families, and suffered health risks as a result of these travels. In 1993 Zimbabwe undertook a project for water sector reform; they invited women to partake in the discussions and decisions being made. Four years later a Community-based Management approach was adopted in Chipinge.

UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) contributed US$ 4,000 to the RDC (Chipinge Rural District Council) in 2003 to rehabilitate water supply systems, mainly bore holes. This scheme has been as localised as possible as the community has held workshops for local sinkers and latrine builders. Women have been encouraged to participate and it’s them who select the technology that should be used and the site locations. The initial plan from UNICEF was to rehabilitate 15 boreholes, however, due to the women’s participation in operation and maintenance 60 boreholes were rehabilitated.

There are many positive outcomes from this project, women are given an equal platform to men to voice their opinions and concerns and are able to do something about it. Girls are able to stay in school longer as they do not need to collect water from far distances. These boreholes provide better hygiene and have resulted in a decrease in diarrhoeal disease. This village will act as a role model for other communities and will be UNICEF’s success story to encourage other villages to participate in this project.

Although this was a successful project, there were some obstacles which needed to be dealt with during the process. Men felt as if their roles were threatened, men tend to be the head of the households and often disapproved if their wives involving themselves in the community affairs. UNICEF arranged workshops which helped demonstrate the importance of both men and women being trained, which helped the men see the equality between them and their wives. Some men also took to household tasks to help their wives with their workload. Male disapproval was not the only obstacle women had to overcome as the traditional dress for a woman is a long dress. However, in order to work they must wear overalls, which were seen as inappropriate. Now women can freely wear overalls to work during latrine construction and repairing of boreholes.


Overall this is a positive example of NGO’s making significant progress in the inequalities of water in Africa, as they set up equal opportunities for the women and set up workshops to educate and encourage this equality. UNICEF saw the problems surrounding water was mainly impacting women so took them on board in making any decisions and gave them key roles in the project. If this can be seen and replicated in other villages across Africa women will have more of a chance at equality and development.

Comments

  1. Unknown22 December 2017 at 07:27

    Hi,

    This is a very informative blog post! Although it was a successful project which helped rehabilitate water supply systems in Zimbabwe, I was wondering whether NGOs and its water management can actually help reduce poverty and gender inequalities? As Zimbabwe is one of the poorest countries in the world..

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mari de Soissons4 January 2018 at 04:43

    Hi Amandeep,

    This is a great example of a project which achieved in garnering actual female agency (as opposed to using female participation as a tokenistic, box-ticking excercise!).

    It's interesting that you mention the challenge of male resistance on account of them feeling threatened. I read an interesting paper by Cornwall (2000) which suggests often men are unwilling to engage in gender-participatory projects because they focus a little too much on women, leaving them to feel excluded and thus unwilling to cooperate. This paper was of course published 18 years ago, do you think that this opinion is (or has ever been) the case? The training that UNICEF gave to men and women to see the benefits of gender equality is a wonderful caveat to this argument, but do you think that this approach is widespread enough?

    ReplyDelete

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