Malawi
In the face of climate change and limited resources, this community came up with a solution to help fund the ongoing maintenance of their new water system: growing bananas.
Phaiyce has persevered to reach secondary school. At 14, she’s preparing to take exams this year. Yet millions of students won’t reach this point in their education as they drop out due to poor school water, sanitation, and hygiene.
Meet Lennie, a passionate young woman whose journey with Water For People began in 2015, when she was only 11 years old. That was the year Water For People built bathrooms, handwashing facilities, and menstrual hygiene management units to support students’ sanitation and hygiene needs at Lennie’s school, Chilomoni Primary.
Meet Finalisi. She’s a mother of four, a farmer, and a volunteer with an absolutely critical role: making sure clean water is available every day.
Situated between hills, this hard-to-reach village is in the Chiradzulu District in southern Malawi. A mild, cool climate attracted settlers from nearby Mozambique in the early ‘90s who were in search of land for farming. However, this pursuit of greener pasture led to a major problem – lack of water.
For Prisca, hygiene has changed everything. A mother of five, Pricsa lives in the Misanjo village in southern Malawi. She introduces herself with a huge smile. She is proud of her role in the community and the story she has to tell.
On any given day, as she sees her kids off to school or prepares food for her family, Maureen could get a call from a community in her region. She’d drop everything in that moment, grab her tools, and head off on her bicycle.
John overcame poverty through poop businesses.
That’s right, you read that correctly.
“My parents were very poor,” John says. “I tried to go to school but my uniforms were so torn that I looked almost naked. Friends would laugh at me, and I decided to stop school.”
Annie sits outside of her mud-plastered home, a small thatched canopy providing little respite from the Malawi heat. Her gaze focuses on some scribbled words on the side of her latrine: Tigwiritse Nchito Chimbuzi Moyenera Nthawi Zonse.
Let’s use the latrine properly at all times.