The people of Dabil Ward
deserve clean water
Donate now to help Karimu bring clean water to Dabil Ward
This $1.5 million project will be completed in three phases.
Currently we we’re raising money to complete the first phase.
Phase 1 - Cost $300,000
Building the intakes, collecting water from multiple sources, and bringing it to one or more sedimentation tanks.
Phase 2 - Cost $700,000
Building distribution tanks.
Phase 3 - Cost $500,000
Building water points.
About the campaign
No human need is more basic than the need for water. Karimu believes everyone has a right to clean water, including the residents of Dabil Ward, in the Babati District of Tanzania’s Manyara Region. We are prioritizing delivering clean water for the people of Dabil.
Karimu’s first major water project piped clean water to within 500 meters of every home in Dabil Ward’s neighbor, Ayalagaya Ward. Walking 500 meters to fetch water will sound daunting to people who live in rich countries, but many Ayalagaya residents had been forced to walk miles to get water, often from streams or ponds in which livestock and wild animals walked and defecated. That filthy water had most often been collected by the girl children of Ayalagaya’s subsistence farming households, robbing them of several hours a day that they might have devoted to attending school or doing homework.
Dabil Ward remains plagued by the shaky school attendance and water-borne diseases, often lethal to children under five, that once afflicted Ayalagaya. Karimu is determined to turn this around.
It won’t be easy. But Karimu has succeeded before, not only in Ayalagaya Ward, but in another of Ayalagaya’s neighbors, Arri Ward. Therefore, we understand what we must do. We see the Dabil Ward water project as unfolding in three major phases. The first phase will involve building intakes to collect water from a number of different sources. As in Ayalagaya and Arri, local residents will supply the hard labor of digging ditches for the water mains and distribution pipes. Then, the second phase will require construction of distribution tanks. Finally, in the third phase we’ll construct hundreds of water points all over Dabil Ward, so that, exactly as in Ayalagaya and Arri, each household will be within 500 meters of free, clean water.
This is a $1.5 million project. However, right now we’re raising money to complete the first phase, for a cost of $300,000.
Given these conditions, it should come as no surprise that the Ayalagaya Ward water project has brought dramatic improvements to the lives of Ayalagaya residents. For example, diarrheal disease has fallen 30 percent and school attendance has risen by the same amount. Previously, girls had performed poorly in school relative to boys, but now they outperform boys. Yet boys have also done better in their studies, so that now, unprecedented numbers of male and female primary school students pass Tanzania’s national exam to qualify for secondary school.
The Ayalagaya water project has been a stunning success in part due to Karimu’s insistence that all of its projects must be maintained by local people. Local “water champions” identify infrastructure problems such as leaky faucets, broken hinges on valve chambers, and missing keys for locks. Subsequently, they work with local water committees to solve the problems.
