Habitat for Humanity Malawi (HFHM) joins the rest of the World in commemorating the World Water Day (WWD) that falls on 22nd March every year. The aim of the WWD is to highlight the importance of freshwater. Another intention is to advocate for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. This year’s global theme is celebrated under the theme “Groundwater: Making the invisible visible”. In Malawi, the WWD will be celebrated under the sub-theme, “Building Resilience in Communities through Ground Water Use”.
HFHM affirms its committed to build resilience in communities on the importance and sustainable use of ground water. HFHM promotes measures for sustainability of boreholes as an adaptation method for use of ground water. This idea is based on the background that a lot of deep wells are being dug and ground water is continually being extracted from the ground and less action is put on retaining the water in the ground.
As Malawi commemorates the WWD, HFHM advocate for sustainable water technologies that integrate environmental sustainability. HFHM believes in empowering communities to take up the responsibility of maintaining and sustaining their water source. Therefore, HFHM envisions the following.
- Improvement in the effectiveness of water point committees.
- Improvement in the availability of area mechanics.
- Improvement in the coordination between different actors (i.e. District Council key WASH stakeholders, Traditional Authority, Water Point Committees, area mechanics, and water monitoring assistants).
- Improvement in the effectiveness of the District Water Office´s water point committee trainings to achieve improvements to transparency and sustainability on a larger scale than the communities directly reached by this project.
- Raised awareness (popularize) of the Community Based Management manual which is currently not widely and effectively used district trainers.
