About Community Water Alliance
Community Water Alliance, a grassroots based WASH (water, sanitation & hygiene) movement registered in Zimbabwe appeal for support in cash and kind on resourcing public water points with measures meant to prevent spread of COVID 19 within communities. This initiative is a citizen initiative meant to complement Government and Stakeholder efforts in preventing COVID 19 spread. It will be executed taking into consideration social distancing and the Zimbabwean lock down context.
Context
Majority of Local Authorities in Zimbabwe are struggling in ensuring access to available, acceptable and quality potable water. Citizens therefore have resorted to boreholes as main access points for water service delivery. There are however queues and crowding at boreholes which has the potential danger of turning these water access points into hot spots if not carefully managed. Women who are confined to non-paying household chores of fetching water, are placed at a high risk of contracting COVID 19 if water access points are not properly managed.
Community Water Alliance (CWA) has majority of its members managing water point committees in wards within Harare Metropolitan Province. Majority of our membership have already started complimenting initiatives to prevent spread of COVID 19 at water points. In Glen View and Budiriro, CWA membership that is part of water point committees around boreholes have started enforcing social distancing at public water points. They are already helping citizens by facilitating fetching water with protective clothing. Citizens are discouraged from handling taps or borehole handles and CWA members wearing sanitized gloves help fetch water. This is being done to avoid different hands handling public water point infrastructure. The pictures below demonstrate the initiative birthed as community level:
To complete this initiative birthed by CWA members at community level, the Alliance has launched an initiative dubbed #COVID19FreeWaterPoints whose objective is to resource water point committees with protective clothing like sanitizers for hand washing of women/citizens visiting public water points; protective clothing (gloves and masks) for water point committee members assisting communities. With time CWA intends to capacitate water point committees to provide extensive civic awareness on:
1) How COVID 19 is spread
2) Symptoms of the disease
3) What to do if one is sick
4) Referrals
5) Getting households ready for prevention of COVID 19
6) Essentials for emergency preparedness
The awareness will be done at the public water point as citizens come to fetch water.
Requirements
To fulfil the above objective CWA is appealing for donations in cash or kind of the following hand washing packs:
1) Sanitizers
2) Protective Gloves
3) Soap
4) Disinfectant
5) Masks
The purpose of this initiative is to complement citizen led initiatives already undertaken. Accounting for resources raised will be done on a weekly basis.
Target Area
This initiative will be piloted in Glen View and Budiriro first, which are cholera hotspots in Harare. The results of the initiative will be used to scale-up the interventions to other provinces and areas subject to availability of resources. Your contributions are therefore welcome.
Contact and Support Details
Ecocash Number +263 775 255 458 (Hardlife Mudzingwa, Community Water Alliance Programs Manager)
World Remit Number +263 775 255 458 (Hardlife Mudzingwa, Community Water Alliance Programs Manager)
For further inquiries contact Hardlife Mudzingwa on +263 775 255 458
Source: Community Water Alliance
