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Safe Water for All: Empowering Refugees & Communities in Tanzania

Safe Water for All
Safe Water for All
Posted October 29th, 2018 by Water Mission.

Facing violent political unrest and economic decline, hundreds of thousands of Burundians have fled to Tanzania, a neighboring country in East Africa. The recent influx of refugees has overwhelmed the area’s already insufficient resources. An unfortunate consequence of Tanzania’s support of refugees has been animosity from nearby indigenous communities. While life in the camps is difficult, refugees are provided basic access to shelter, water, food, medicine, and education. Tanzanians residing nearby are often living in worse conditions than the refugees. Additionally, the cost of living for locals has increased as aid organizations consume significant quantities of staple products, driving prices up ... Read More

Scaling Up for Greater Impact

Water Mission's booth at SIWI World Water Week.
Water Mission's booth at SIWI World Water Week.
Posted September 18th, 2018 by Mackenzie Schiff.

Water Mission is poised to be a catalyst for change in the water sector. We are now recognized globally for our expertise in solar-powered water pumping, remote monitoring, water treatment standards, pricing models, and community development. We’ve come a long way from our grassroots beginnings – what began with Dr. George and Molly Greene following the Lord’s call to start an engineering ministry has now served more than 3.6 million people worldwide with safe water solutions. “[As we] continue raising standards, increasing the sustainability and quality of our project construction and design, we can’t operate in a vacuum in Charleston,” Executive Vice ... Read More

Enabling responsive support for water services with the MAP

Safe water system in rural Malawi.
Safe water system in rural Malawi.
Posted August 2nd, 2018 by Andrew Armstrong.

In 2017, Water Mission launched a major initiative that fundamentally changed the way we monitor and support rural water services throughout our global programs. Driven by our core values of excellence and integrity, we desire for the people we serve in communities, institutions, and areas affected by crisis to enjoy the highest level of water accessibility, safety, and sustainability. With this goal in mind, we collaborated with a consultant (IBM jStart) to develop a tool that would enable efficient and scalable monitoring, support, and learning. The tool, which we call the Monitoring and Alerting Platform (MAP), was designed to make water ... Read More

Safe Water for 313,000 Refugees

Nyarugusu Refugee Settlement
Nyarugusu Refugee Settlement
Posted June 28th, 2018 by Will Furlong, Regional Director Tanzania.

There are two seasons in Nyarugusu Refugee Settlement, one of mud and another of dust. We’ve been in the dusty season for only six weeks, but already the trees along the sides of roads are orange with red African soil, stirred up by countless aid trucks moving through the camp. Children love to play along these roads, or just sit and watch the trucks go by, so they become filthy from the dust—as do we. Water Mission has been working in Nyarugusu since September 2015 when we responded to an emergency need to supply safe drinking water to 30,000 refugees from ... Read More

Demystifying Solar-Powered Water Pumping

Posted June 21st, 2018 by Andrew Armstrong.

Solar pumping is the trendiest technology in rural water supply today. Much of the interest in solar pumping is motivated by the Sustainable Development Goal to increase water service levels in the most remote areas. A more compelling driver is that rural water users are willing to pay for service that is accessible near or within their homes. There is currently no more promising technology for meeting these expectations in off-grid settings than solar pumping. Despite this high interest and the fact that solar pumping technology has been around for decades, a great deal of misinformation is being ... Read More

Investing in Relationships: 2018 Indonesia Workshop

2018 Indonesia Workshop
2018 Indonesia Workshop
Posted April 5th, 2018 by Mackenzie Schiff.

Water Mission routinely organizes learning workshops for staff to identify strengths, challenges, and opportunities for improvement across global programs. Purposefully calling these “workshops” rather than “trainings,” Water Mission aims to emphasize the importance of two-way conversation. Charleston staff members attend to share updates from headquarters, gain insights from the field, and facilitate conversations focused on best practices. In January, staff from Charleston and Indonesia gathered for an engineering and community development workshop. They presented updates on strategy, global standards, innovations in engineering, and community development processes. At a breakout session, the group discussed complex obstacles and potential solutions for a few specific ... Read More