For years, each time Regina Mukasimpunga sat in church, she found it hard to think about anything apart from the chore awaiting her when service let loose: fetching water.
The never-ending task dominated the lifetime of the agricultural Rwandan community, forcing residents to depart the home with jerry cans before the sun got here as much as take long walks within the darkness within the hilly terrain to achieve a spring. There, they often competed with other families to fill jugs, everyone eager to move on with their days as quickly as possible.
“We would get up at 5 a.m. to get water, which regularly took two hours. When we finished, we were exhausted,” said Mukasimpunga, at her home in Gicumbi district, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) south of the capital, Kigali. “We couldn’t farm productively.”
Mukasimpunga and her husband, Fulgence Ndemeye, enlisted their three children to assist, however the job could last so long it made the kids late for college, their tardiness earning them reprimands from their teachers and difficult their ability to maintain up in class and study when at home.
Then, in 2021, World Vision opened a water station about 50 meters (164 feet) from their home. The life change was immediate: Now, everyone could start their day on time, take more showers, and wash their clothes more often. Mukasimpunga and Ndemeye could grow tomatoes year-round and never just through the rainy season. They could triple the livestock water ration, which meant their cow gave them more milk, which they might sell to their neighbors. The family’s economics improved a lot, they were capable of join a savings group.
Mukasimpunga and Ndemeye’s story is just considered one of many. The same story has happened over and yet again in Rwanda, changing the each day lives of 1 million people on this country of 13.4 million, because of considered one of the ultimate commitments made by former World Vision CEO Richard Stearns.
Stearns met with Rwandan prime minister Édouard Ngirente in 2018 and launched a five-year plan to make Rwanda the primary developing nation with universal access to wash water, ranging from the 39 subdistricts or sectors where World Vision was operating on the time. Since then, World Vision has partnered with the federal government and achieved universal basic water service coverage within the targeted areas.
In 2023, current CEO Edgar Sandoval celebrated when this system reached a significant milestone: 1 million Rwandans now have clean water inside 500 meters (0.3 miles) of their homes.
“Access to essentials like clean water levels the playing field, empowering kids for achievements like ending their education and discovering their God-given gifts,” he wrote. “As we do that work together in Jesus’ name, we show the truest meaning of victory … that Christ got here to usher in a recent kingdom where hope wins.”
A 30-year partnership
World Vision’s now 30-year history in Rwanda—the ministry has been serving within the country for the reason that genocide led to 1994—has played a critical role in allowing them to construct physical and social infrastructure at scale. World Vision Rwanda is the most important NGO within the country, with a mean annual budget of $34 million, and only six of their 303 staff are of non-Rwandese nationality. They are also the country’s largest non-governmental partner in providing clean water.
After the universal basic water coverage initiative kicked off in 2018, World Vision met leaders of the districts where its 39 areas are based to set goals. They signed memos of understanding stating that World Vision would contribute 60 percent of the project’s costs and that the federal government would contribute the remaining 40 percent.
“If you simply take a look at the journey from 1994 to now, infrastructure development, in comparison with other countries, has gone very fast,” said Pauline Okumu, the national director of World Vision Rwanda. “The message is: We must construct our country. There’s intentionality around goal setting.”
For engineers, their first step of making clean water infrastructure is studying the topography of a region and determining in the event that they need to construct a pumping station or in the event that they can supply water by gravity, says Murebwayire Marie Léonce, a technical program manager for World Vision’s WASH (Water Sanitation and Hygiene) program. Engineers must design the right water pumps and install them, and a technical team services the water treatment system.
“Most of the areas where we serve are usually not reached by road. Service providers transport all materials by automotive till the closest road, and the community supports by transporting materials manually from the road to the designated site,” said Léonce.
Not all the things has been smooth. Existing infrastructure has been vulnerable to floods and landslides. Land needed for brand spanking new infrastructure sometimes runs through people’s private property. Negotiating with farmers takes time and infrequently requires the federal government to step in.
But Okumu, who has worked in a variety of countries across the continent, noted that in contrast to public officials she has observed elsewhere, the Rwandan government has often reached out to have interaction World Vision. Public officials are often evaluated on whether or not they accomplish their goals, and in turn, this accountability spurs them to achieve out to their NGO partners to make sure they’re doing their part.
Unlike other organizations based in Kigali who might make trips to other parts of the country, “World Vision is community-based,” said Alice Muhimpundu, WASH’s health behavioral change manager. “We are there.”
Further, World Vision’s own vision casting makes them a perfect partner, said Parfaite Uwera, the acting mayor of Gicumbi District, an area of nearly half one million, where CT visited a water pump, a water point station, and a clinic, church, and faculty.
Image: Photography by Jeez / Courtesy of World Vision
A water station in Rwanda provided by World Vision.
World Vision’s own long-term planning aligns closely with the federal government’s own initiatives, making it easy for public officials to work “hand in hand” with them, she said. “World Vision really is special in the realm of partnership. … They be sure that what they leave behind is protected and sustainable.”
Nowhere is that this seen more clearly than in the federal government’s decision to permit World Vision to make use of its own procurement process to accumulate the sanitation infrastructure materials, circumventing what would have been a far longer and more tedious process. They also allowed them to rent their very own contractors and maintain tendering and operations.
“As a Christian organization, the federal government believed they might not must worry about fraud,” said Muhimpundu. “That was simply amazing.”
The Rwandan government also gave World Vision special permission to advance with its project through the pandemic. Rwanda was the primary country in sub-Saharan Africa to issue a lockdown and had more stringent COVID-19 regulations than many neighboring nations, yet quite a few water infrastructure projects carried on or began construction in 2020.
As these projects have wrapped up, World Vision has handed over control of the water to the federal government and native councils, which monitor water usage, report any damages or broken infrastructure, and maintain the sites.
Providing sanitation education
World Vision also works with churches from quite a few denominations to show sanitation curriculum, identifying priests and pastors as “key change agents” who may help students make connections between hygiene and Scripture. The best teacher, though, has been COVID-19. Anxiety about contracting the disease modified personal behavior and policy.
When churches closed through the lockdown, the federal government worked with religious leaders to find out its criteria for reopening houses of worship. One feature now mandatory for churches: handwashing stations. When people met for the primary time after lockdown at one ADEPR (Association of French Pentecostals in Rwanda) congregation in Gicumbi, greeters met them on the steps and directed them to handwashing stations, delivered to them by World Vision.
“Then they might hug and sit next to one another and never feel nervous,” said Sunday Emmanuel, considered one of the pastors. “Washing is now a part of the culture.”
The church has a big outdoor baptismal font; previously, they used rainwater, but now they’ll take from their clean water supply.
Not all churches have had access to most of these hygienic facilities. For months, the ADEPR church has been hosting one other congregation that has been unable to get its own constructing due to the sanitation requirements. Its leaders have submitted a proposal to World Vision to assist them with the sanitation costs for his or her constructing.
Accessible clean water has also transformed quite a few local institutions.
Image: Photography by Jeez / Courtesy of World Vision
A water station from World Vision at a college in Rwanda.
At Groupe Scolaire Muhondo, a college that serves just over 2,000 students, greater than half a dozen trophies sit behind the desk of principal Elie Habumuremyi. They finished second within the country last 12 months in primary school girl’s handball. World Vision’s changes have made it easier for the varsity to arrange sports teams by offering athletes clean drinking water, and the presence of extracurriculars helps incentivize students to remain in class longer. Meanwhile, girls miss school less because there’s more sanitation resources available to them once they’re on their periods.
Leaders at one local clinic that serves a community of 20,000 noted that prior to World Vision’s water installation, greater than half of those that got here in suffered from some hygiene-related issue. About 20 babies are delivered there a month, and lots of moms were forced to return inside weeks of giving birth due to a sanitation-related issue. Without access to running water, health care providers didn’t often wash their hands or bed sheets.
Some of those issues were mitigated when considered one of the staffers, Emmanuel Twagirumukiza, invented a water filtration system operated by foot pump. But the size of World Vision’s recent water system has dramatically reduced disease for teenagers under five, helped patients not contract other infectious diseases while getting help for unrelated issues on the clinic, and lowered the variety of intestinal worm cases.
The ministry will not be stopping at 1 million Rwandans with clean water, though. They’ve added wells to serve one other 200,000 people and expanded into 30 more areas. They can also take a look at adding more wells to scale back the common distance to wash water from 500 to 200 meters (0.3 to 0.1 miles). (Donors can now support this cause through the organization’s recent World Change subscription giving model.)
“Reaching this milestone has actually strengthened my personal faith as a person, as an individual,” said Innocent Mutabaruka, integrated programs director at World Vision Rwanda.“You can actually see things changing instantaneously. You see the impact that this has on people’s lives and also you say, ‘This is God.’”
