Women and Water

Photo Courtesy of Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

For women in Sub-Saharan Africa, the challenge of providing their families with water is a daily struggle.

Water sources are often far from the village, and women must walk for hours to fetch water daily. Some families even keep their daughters at home so that they can help collect water. Instead of going to school, these girls follow their mothers and walk, on average, at least 10 miles every day (International Museum of Women). While walking to get water, particularly when they must walk alone before or after daylight hours, women are vulnerable to rape and other violent attacks.

The journey also requires them to carry buckets of water weighing up to 20 kg on their heads (UN, Women and Water). Carrying such a heavy load over long distances has detrimental health effects, including back and chest pains, developmental deformities, arthritic disease, and miscarriages.

Drinking the water in Sub-Saharan Africa is often just as hazardous as retrieving it. Women are not only at risk of sickness themselves, but are also responsible for taking care of family members who fall ill after drinking contaminated water. Furthermore, they may then have to take on the labor of the sick family member, on top of their own labor, while they nurse their loved ones back to health. (International Museum of Women).

Photo courtesy of Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

Just as women and girls in Africa shoulder a disproportionate amount of the world’s water burden, they also have the most to gain from clean water projects. Voss Foundation projects benefit women immensely, for example:

• Direct access to clean water eliminates the need to keep girls at home to fetch water. As a result, more girls from all of our project sites have the opportunity to go to school and receive an education.
• In each one of our water projects, women gain political power through membership in water management committees, which we make sure are composed of at least 50% women.
• In Swari, Kenya, the Voss Foundation reduced the distance to the nearest water source from over three miles to approximately half a mile. Collecting water is no longer a laborious and dangerous task. In addition, with less time devoted to getting water, women have more time to pursue their own education and to earn an income.
• One of our five wells in Pel, Mali is at a garden owned by a local women’s cooperative.  We’ve helped these women grow healthy produce that has effectively doubled their income.
• Our well in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the only source of water for the Georges Malaika Foundation‘s School for Girls, the first in the region.

By providing whole communities with access to clean water, the Voss Foundation has been able to empower women in Sub-Saharan Africa to improve their own lives.

Through our Women Helping Women campaigns around the world we make this connection direct, between female donors and beneficiaries.  We have brought some of the women donors to meet the women whose lives they have affected with access to clean water, which is ultimately a life-altering experience for all. (See photos from our Women Helping Women trips to Swari and Ndonyo Nasipa.)

Learn more about our Women Helping Women efforts and consider joining us this year!