Finding Your Voice and Using It for Good.

Since 2019, I oversee Impact and Quality Control in Water Access Rwanda. I joined Water Access Rwanda after graduating. At the time, what pushed me to apply in Water Access Rwanda was the story of how the founder started the company to save people’s lives, especially those threatened by the crocodile around lakes and rivers they usually get water from.

When I joined the company, I found it committed to finding water and implementing solutions for communities that have no access to clean and safe water.

At first, I was charged with conducting surveys before a new water point, such as an INUMA™ water point is constructed. The surveys sought to identify the current water source, time spent to get water, money spent to get clean water, etc. This allows us to establish a baseline of how people are currently getting water and/or suffering as a result of not having water. After conducting surveys, I leave the field and it is my duty to communicate what I have seen: I show up, speak up, and get my elected members of the office to defend and support the communities.

I advocate for the communities with no access to clean and safe water every single day. I do this for communities that have never had a water source (in other words new communities) and for communities where their water points were damaged and fell in disrepair (in other words, existing communities).

Internally, I push our maintenance team to repair water points as soon as possible so we don’t lose our opportunity to continue to create a good impact in communities by letting them access clean water 24/7. I hate to witness downtime hours (when a water point is not providing safe water) and work hard to minimize their occurrence. When downtime hours increase, I think of where people are getting water from as an alternative. Losing access to water from one of our managed water points can mean increase in waterborne diseases transmissions as people go back to contaminated water sources, money spent on a jerrycan increases, time is spent to get water increases, and some students are late at school due to finding water in long distance away from home. A reliable safe water achieves a lot of impact in the community and reduces the time they spend worried about their access to water. That is why I stand up and push the maintenance team to repair the water point in the shortest time possible.

One of the most rewarding aspects of my advocacy efforts is hearing how we impact the lives of communities who get water at either one of our public water points or private accessing their homes. During field visits, we often see the big line of jerrycans at public water points and we hear stories of our users of how they are now having enough time to do home activities, how they are no longer affected by water-borne diseases, and how they are no longer spending much time looking water.

Clean water is important for our wellness, for strong communities, and a thriving economy. That is why we should all become a voice of people who are not accessing clean water and demand that it be provided to them. To do this, the first step is too simple have the passion in you and then to standup and find a solution. One of the solutions is to reach out to Water Access Rwanda and nominate a community you know of that is suffering from lack of access to safe water.

Visit this platform to fill a survey and suggest a location for our team.