Independent and reliable water supply for the Mackenzie Community School

October 2023

During the last few months, we worked together with the school administration of the Mackenzie Community School to improve the hygienic situation by ensuring a more reliable water supply. This is a first important step in addressing the urgent need for additional sanitary infrastructure to meet the needs of the growing school in terms of classrooms as well as number of students.

In the past the water for the school was provided by the local public water supplier and a manual borehole that was drilled more than two decades ago. This was problematic in several ways: First the running costs for the bought water were relatively high and a challenge for the school to meet. Due to disputes in the past, the water supply has been shut down for longer periods of time. Furthermore, this supply was not always very reliable. This led to the situation that the school relied heavily on the manual water pump, which was never intended for such big volumes. The manual water pump was furthermore getting old and more challenging to maintain. Water being essential not only for hygiene (washing hands and using the toilets), but also for the feeding program running at the school, the school would have been at risk if the manual pump broke down. This would be a big interruption in the education in Mackenzie and possibly lead to a temporary closure of the school.

As a first step in July 2022, we financed the drilling of a new, deeper borehole on the property of the school. During the summer of 2023 we built the tank stand and connected an electrical pump. In a last step the Mackenzie Community is now connecting the new water supply to the existing sanitary infrastructure.

Therefore, since September 2023 the Mackenzie Community School has an independent new water supply, which can meet the growing needs. This helps them not only save costs in the long run, but also ensure a higher reliability. This is a great milestone for the school and a foundation on which we can improve the overall sanitary infrastructure in the future.