This project is made possible through the partnership of Water Charity and the National Peace Corps Association. 
Location
Bakili Village, Mulanje District, Malawi.
Community Description
Bakili is a typical rural Malawian village without running water or electricity, located along a dirt road, a great distance from any paved road or urban area. Bakili lost a 14-year-old girl who went to fetch water from the local river and presumably drowned. Her body has not been recovered.
Problem Addressed
There is no accessible clean water source for rural residents of Bakili Village. This leads to illness and, in some cases, death, particularly among children under the age of 5. Residents currently fetch water for drinking and cooking from dirty wells or waterways like streams or rivers. Women, in particular, are vulnerable in the absence of clean, nearby water sources. In our partner villages, women fetching water from sometimes distant, unsanitary sources have experienced domestic abuse for taking too long (husbands suspect infidelity), rape (when women venture into remote areas), and death from drowning in flooded rivers during the rainy season.
Project Description
This project entails constructing a borehole in Bakili Village.
The borehole location was chosen by a village project committee, acting on behalf of the entire village. The site is publicly accessible. Construction will be done by EZ Borehole Drillers, a company located in Blantyre, with substantial experience in the area, including other boreholes funded by Water Charity. The installation will take three days to complete. It is expected that water will be reached at about 45 meters, but the wells will be drilled to depths of about 60 meters, if necessary.
Before drilling, a hydro-geographical assessment using electrical measurements will be conducted to find the depth of the underlying aquifer. The borehole will be guaranteed for one year by EZ Borehole Drillers. Above ground, the boreholes will include a standard metal pump mechanism, a cement foundation to protect the pump mechanism, a cement spillway to channel excess water, and a clothes washing station.
Water Charity funds will be used to pay for the skilled labor as well as for the materials that cannot be found locally, such as piping, fixtures and fittings, and concrete. Communities will contribute volunteer labor, materials, including bricks and sand, and about $400 in cash.
Project Impact
Bakili Village, Mulanje District, Malawi. 97 households; 474 people.
Project Administration
The project will be administered by Michael Buckler, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Malawi from 2006 to 2008. He is the founder and CEO of Village X, a social enterprise located in Washington, D.C. dedicated to improving community development work in sub-Saharan Africa. He is a member of the National Peace Corps Association, Friends of Malawi, and Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of Washington, D.C.
Monitoring and Maintenance
EZ Borehole Drillers will conduct 2 days of community-based borehole management training. Trainees will include the village chief and members of two borehole management committees, a technical committee (responsible for upkeep and maintenance) and a sanitation committee (charged with keeping the borehole tidy and planting a vegetable garden that utilizes excess water from the well). The technical committees will collect a maintenance fee of 100 MK (about 20 cents) per month per household to ensure that there are sufficient funds to adequately maintain the facility and repair it when needed.
This is an important infrastructure project that will improve the health and well-being of Bakili. It is well-planned, with strong management and fiscal safeguards in place. It incorporates elements of oversight and buy-in by the residents to make them sustainable into the future.
In addition, Village X will gather data from the nearest health clinic to evaluate the impact of the borehole, comparing rates of waterborne illness before and after installation.
Comments
This marks the 5th project in the Malawi Borehole Program. It also falls under our East Africa Water & Sanitation Program.
Not only will Water Charity and Village X finish the initial 7 villages in our original concept, but due to the rampant success of the program, we will be expanding it to include a wider area of Malawi. We are working on helping train more people to do boreholes and will be expanding this program northward to help more communities in need. Exciting stuff indeed!
Dollar Amount of Project
$7,600
This project has been fully funded by an anonymous donor. If you would like to support this effort, please consider donating to the Program as a whole, or Water Charity’s project fund, so we can do more projects like this.
This project has been completed. To see the results, CLICK HERE.
