While water is a scarce commodity in Africa, it’s a stark reality in Somalia. Mothers and young girls cover miles only to fetch polluted water. The past two-decade conflict resulted in the deterioration of the water and sanitation situation across the country, rendering communities’ social structures and coping mechanisms non-functional. The continued internal displacement of the population adds increasing pressure on an already overextended WASH infrastructure.
Since its inception in 2010, Vision Corps Initiative has always been at the forefront of addressing the WASH needs of the host communities and IDPs in South Central Somalia and Puntland as well. The WASH program aims at enhancing the capacity of communities to access water resources, manage systems effectively and efficiently, sustain existing services and expand services to the communities, promoting correct hygiene education to target communities in emergency situations.
Vision Corps Initiative has worked to implement immediate lifesaving programs in water and sanitation aimed at improving access to safe water, sanitation facilities, and public health service in middle juba, lower & middle Shebelle, Gedo, Galgadud, and Puntland as well. The initiative works to construct water platforms, tanks, distribution points, and sanitation facilities while working to promote proper hygienic practices through the delivery of essential hygiene supplies and capacity building so that the people of Somalia can live dignified life standards that are acceptable by the World Health Organization for a better society.
Wash programmes are implemented to reduce the prevalence of waterborne diseases and address the underlying causes of malnutrition. The initiative is also dedicated to ensuring communities’ self-reliance by working to deliver community training guaranteeing the sustainability of programs.
To increase the availability and accessibility of safe drinking water and support recovery from the effects of recurrent water shortages and reducing over expenditure on purchasing water, Vision Corps Initiative implemented a water project in Baidoa, Bay region, Somalia. The project benefitted approximately 30,000 vulnerable pastoralists and their livestock, the displaced and disaster-affected women, girls, boys, and men facing acute water shortages through the rehabilitation of boreholes and underground water reservoirs and the rehabilitation and construction of shallow wells, and the development of household water treatment systems. Vision Corps Initiative also facilitated hygiene training and water treatment activities aimed at improving hygiene and sanitation conditions.
In Badhadhe town, lower Juba, the completed water supply system now produces up to 12,000 litres an hour, which is stored in the elevated tank and then gravitated to the water access points from which it can be easily accessed. About 3000 people (410 men, 640 women, 1,070 girls, and 880 boys) and about 430 herds of livestock are served by the water facility. Vision Corps Initiative also ensured the quality of drinking water by initiating hygiene promotional behaviors were 24 local hygiene promoters (17 men, 7 women) were trained and linked to the project, trained 12(9 men and 3 women) water management committee as an integral component of the water project.
