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The Project “ Water source of life and development ” has concluded! In addition to providing access to drinking water to approximately 1,150 families, it has allowed us to undertake a development path that has made the local community the protagonist from the beginning.
Together with AMU and Casebu, the Burundian NGO that has been a partner of AMU for years in projects for the development of local communities, the Church and the Burundian bishops, COPED Caritas Burundi, the Government, with the Ministry responsible for the water sector and the provincial authorities, but above all the inhabitants of the Rukanda hill who have made available their manpower, their goods, with the commitment to safeguard and maintain the common goods that were being built. In this sense, 24 people were trained to raise awareness among other members of the community on management of the common good and 74 people, organized in 35 committees, have been trained to ensure adequate management of water access points. With the fundamental contribution of all the actors involved, they were 24.8 km of aqueducts and infrastructures were built, 8 reservoirs, 39 fountains, both single and multiple, to ensure that water from the two available sources could reach the homes of 1,150 families in Bururi, and finally 20 ecological toilets were built, an experimental model for some local families. Thanks to the tanks and fountains in proximity, women and children no longer have to walk for hours on steep roads and paths, to collect water that is not even very clean, especially after the rains. Now every house is at most 500 meters from a source of clean and drinkable water. Now, the water that comes out of the fountains is clear and purified, even when it rains. The availability of drinking water and the correct use of ecological latrines, which allow the reuse of organic waste in agriculture, will improve the hygienic-sanitary conditions of the population and will allow the reduction of diseases and deaths caused by intestinal parasites.
The project “Water source of life and development”, in addition to providing a support path related to health and hygiene, to free and stimulate the development potential of the community itself has created a training path on community micro credit . This is a savings and credit system managed in small groups in which each member participates with a small sum which, together with everyone’s contribution, goes to form a fund from which each can draw, in turn, to start an income-generating activity. Those who benefit from a “quota” then undertake to return it with the proceeds of the new activity . This part of the project has achieved results well above expectations: out of 15 planned groups, 23 community micro-credit groups have been started, for a total of 572 people involved , from the Rukanda hill, with a percentage of women equal to 66%. Of the 300 loans planned, members of community microcredit groups have already been able to obtain 1,184 loans. The amount of members’ savings is 22,091,200 BIF (approximately €11,000). AMU’s commitment alongside CASOBU and the Burundian population will continue and will guarantee all possible support so that local communities become the protagonists of their own development, architects and custodians of their own change as happened thanks to the project “Water source of life and development”
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