Clean water is critical to a healthy life. When a community does not have clean water, women and young girls are often the ones walking a great distance to get water from another source. People who drink unclean water are also at a greater risk for serious health problems such as diarrhea and parasites.

Clean water is critical to a healthy life. When a community does not have clean water, women and young girls are often the ones walking a great distance to get water from another source. People who drink unclean water are also at a greater risk for serious health problems such as diarrhea and parasites.

In communities where families lack clean water, World Renew works with local partners and community members to rebuild their water supply, establish new or rebuild damaged sanitation facilities, and train communities in hygiene practices to prevent the spread of disease.

This World Water Day, we wanted to share a “good news” water-related story with you from the community of Karimboni in Kenya.

In this community, World Renew worked with families and our local partner, Anglican Development Services Pwani, to expand the community’s hand dug water pan.

This water pan is essentially a pond that catches and holds water. It was first created in 2013 as a food for work activity related to World Renew’s response to a flood in the area. With limited digging tools, people worked together to dig into the hard ground to create the pan. They were thankful to have this new resource. However, as World Renew partner staff talked with the community members about their needs and goals, they made it clear that expanding the size of this pan was a priority.

Through many hours of hard work and cooperation, World Renew worked with community members to help them to expand their water pan. Today, it is large enough to serve as a clean water source for 100 households!

With this new expanded pan, people in Karimboni no longer have to walk a very long distance to retrieve water. This means that the young girls who were walking a long way every evening to retrieve water now have have more time to focus on their school studies. There are many other benefits, too. The pan is a valuable resource for those who have livestock or kitchen gardens. Families even enjoy having the water pan as a meeting  place where they can socialize and talk with each other.

Thanks to these positive results, the people in Karimboni are even more confident in what they can accomplish together as they work to change the story of their community for the better.

“The success of this water pan project has motivated the community members,” said Stephan Lutz, World Renew Program Consultant in Kenya, “They now feel they have a bigger capacity to carry out a major project using the resources within them.”

You can join World Renew in helping more families in Kenya and around the world have clean water and better health!

Give water today!