Water and sanitation are necessary conditions for the dignified and sustainable development of people. Access to quality water and adequate sanitation reduces under nutrition rates by mitigating diarrhoeal diseases, closely related to this lack, especially among children under 5 years of age. Likewise, it favours the food security, because in guaranteeing the irrigation of the crops, the agricultural productivity is improved. All this contributes to the reduction of poverty.
However, there are still many communities that do not have access to this human right. Among them, those in which Social Promotion Foundation works together with ESMABAMA in the Sofala province, Mozambique’s poorest.
Aware of this importance, Canal de Isabel II, which promotes through its Canal Volunteers program projects in developing countries that aim to increase the quality of life of people through water and sanitation, approved the proposal presented by Social Promotion Foundation and ESMABAMA. Thanks to it, works were carried out for the canalization, construction and improvement of the bathrooms, and the construction and improvement of the water extraction wells in Estaquinha and Barada, two of the missions managed by ESMABAMA.
With this new project, “Improvement of the sanitary conditions and water access for the poorest population of the rural districts in the South of Sofala province (Mozambique)”, which continues the previous one completed in 2016, it is planned to work in all the missions that manages ESMABAMA: Estaquinha, Mangunde, Barada and Machanga, where the needs are greater in recent times, not only because of the extreme poverty that this area suffers, but also because of the inclemency of the weather: the intense rains of the last months have worsened even more sanitation conditions.
The activities of this project have been underway since last August 15, and in September, two volunteers from “Canal Voluntarios” have traveled to the area where they are developing them, to follow up on the initiation phase of infrastructure works. Together with them, two volunteers with a technical profile traveled, they will spend three months in Estaquinha, Mangunde, Barada and Machanga missions. Their work will be not only of qualified support for the execution of the project, but also of accompaniment to the beneficiaries, participating in transversal activities with the children and the communities that live in the missions. During this time, a first soap-making workshop has already been carried out.
