www.villagewater.org

Village Water has been supporting access to safe water, sanitation & hygiene (WASH) since 2004, thanks to founding Trustee David Dixon, a Shropshire businessman, who set out to improve the situation.

Since then, we have reached 850,000 people, working with 3 local partners in Zambia and Mozambique. Our local partners work with the District councils to identify villages needing support. They then run hygiene promotion (including Covid 19 mitigation and materials, and pump maintenance sessions before contracting a local well construction team. trained over the past 5 years with our funding, to repair or provide a new waterpoint. The community is supported for many years when local partners visit to check the pump is working and to gather health data.

Impacts from our latest survey include

• 100% of participants have access to safe water

• 90% drop in open defecation

• Average 70% drop in water borne diseases such as diarrhoea, skin & eye infections

• Average 60% drop in school absence due to water borne illness.

• 383 tonnes of CO2 emissions avoided per village when they no longer burn wood to purify their water. 

• Average 1.5 hour reduction in daily time spent etching water and looking for firewood.

This gives project members more time for social/leisure, income generating, religious, voluntary and domestic activities. 

In schools our local partners run oversee the construction of permanent latrine blocks and run menstrual health sessions before setting up a workshop for pupils and parents to make washable pads to enable girls to stay in school when they reach puberty.

In 2020 for every £1 spent, 93p was on charitable activities, 2p on governance (audit etc) and 5p on fundraising & admin

We moved into our new home at the URC in July 2020.