Written by our Tanzania Team.
The Importance of Clean Water.
FutureSense Foundation works to support communities in Arusha, a place where clean water is not available in all areas. Those who use clean water are mostly from higher socio-economic backgrounds and can afford to buy or use water guards to treat the water. We believe that more families could afford clean water or pay more attention to the water sources they use but that there is insufficient education about the importance of clean water.
Insufficient education about the importance of clean water is directly linked to the spread of diseases like typhoid, cholera and diarrhoea. These diseases affect student and affect their performance in school because many students miss school due to water borne illnesses caused by unclean water.
Because of this and the ongoing global pandemic FutureSense this been focusing on delivering workshops about clean water and hygiene. We recently delivered 12 hours of workshops over a period of 8 days, reaching 136 students of which 99 were girls and 37 boys.
The focus of these workshops were for the students to learn about the importance of clean water and understand the correlation of the spread of illness and poor hygiene or the use of contaminated water. Students learnt about different water sources and how to identify if they could be contaminated and how to treat water in various ways.
After one of the workshops a student came to tell us that he lives along the river with his family. He tells us that they use river water for cooking and drinking and that animals that roam freely use the same water. He tells us that many people around the area have suffered typhoid and cholera but that he has not understood the connection before. After the workshops he has realised the connection and now he understand why people so often get sick. He eagerly tells us that he will share his new knowledge within his community and encourage people to use clean water for drinking and share ideas for how to treat water to be safe to drink.
