WCC - Water Project
Since 2010, WCC has achieved remarkable success through the construction of water wells, offering health and sanitation programs. Providing education to 500 vulnerable young people aged 3-14, victims of the local civil war and AIDS epidemic, orphans and homeless. There is a tremendous need for accessible health care and WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) facilities in rural Sierra Leone. Healthcare and sanitation - especially for women and children - are a great challenge for these communities. Achieving Millennium Development Goal 7, and its 2015 target of reducing of half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation worldwide, are of vital relevance for children and for improving nutrition, education and women’s status in modern societies.
Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions are critical to improve the health of the population of Sierra Leone, especially in the rural regions of the country. Evidence suggests that improved water sources reduce diarrhea morbidity by 21%, improved sanitation reduces diarrhea morbidity by 37.5%, and the simple act of washing hands at critical times can reduce the number of diarrhea cases by as much as 35%. Improvement of drinking-water quality, such as point-of-use disinfection, would lead to a 45% reduction of diarrhea episodes (CDC).
Access to adequate WASH facilities also affects whether girls attend school, as girls are more likely to be responsible for collecting water for the entire family. A lack of sanitation measures in schools is a significant problem - especially for menstruating girls – meaning that they are less likely to attend and remain in school.
Worldwide, millions of people are infected with neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), many of which are water and/or hygiene-related, such as Guinea Worm Disease, Buruli Ulcer, Trachoma, and Schistosomiasis. These diseases are most often found in places with unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation, and insufficient hygiene practices. Access to sanitation is severely limited in Sierra Leone: 8% of rural and 24% of urban population have access to safely managed sanitation infrastructure. The most recent data from the Demographic and Household Survey (DHS 2013) shows that 66% of urban population use latrines, and 7% defecate in open spaces. In rural areas only the 36% of the population use latrines, with 26% practicing open defecation (amounting to more than 1 million people).
The type of facilities available and accessed throughout the country vary depending on the location and on whether these might be broken down or functional and in use. Water points throughout Sierra Leone include public tap/standpipe, tube well or borehole, and protected dug wells (WASH country data accessed in 2018). Facilities for sanitation are generally in poor conditions, with only 20% of urban and 8.3% of rural population having access to latrines, while other forms of sanitation (septic tank and sewer) are not available (3.6% rate of urban access to a septic tank).
According to the recent UNICEF and World Health Organisation (WHO) data, less than 1/3rd of people in Sierra Leone and its rural areas have access to adequate sanitation facilities and safe drinking water, thus explaining the country’s inevitable position as the nation with the world’s worst mortality rate for children under the age of five.
It is understood from interviewing 2000 families in Sierra Leone, that 98% of the population of the country do not have access to public toilets, and most of the children and young people defecate in open areas, thus leading to contagious diseases such as cholera, malaria, and tuberculosis.
WCC envisages to construct modern sanitation facilities to prevent and mitigate contagious diseases affecting the local community of Maboikandoh, and to educate the people of Sierra Leone about the importance of using toilets instead of open defecation. Further to this project, a number of care takers will be employed to help maintain these facilities. WCC aims to construct an additional five (5) water wells in the community, adding to the one already present and functioning - thus totaling to six (6) water wells. The basic health and sanitation training that WCC will offer will also aid in reducing child mortality rates. The water well construction work is currently undertaken by a developing agency (Indiegroup) in Sierra Leone.
Community self-help and fundraising have already partly contributed to meet part of the costs.
Service level Urban (2015%) Rural (2015%)
Sanitation – open defecation 6.3 27.1
Sanitation – basic level 23.8 8.4
Drinking water – surface water 4.4 24
Drinking water – basic level 74.6 47.1
For the sake of this project, WCC is assuming that the local community of Maboikandoh and of the wider Molambay area will make adequate use the of sanitation facilities. This is a relatively well-grounded assumption: since the start of its activities, WCC has established a fruitful cooperation with the local population, and the work of WCC is highly regarded in the communities. As many project proposals are born out of consultations with the beneficiaries (including this one, born out of a long needs assessment and consultations with the local communities), local ownership and dialogue ensure a high turnover of Sierra Leoneans to any of the WCC initiatives. The major risk that can be foreseen is that global uncertainty related to the COVID19 pandemic may impact the implementation of the project: the project timeline may be delayed, and some activities may need to be modified or canceled if restrictions are still in place in the near future.
The 2015 Census data tabulated below depicts the accessibility of the people of Sierra Leone to safely managed drinking water and sanitation facilities (JMP 2017)
World Changing Centre