MADZI ALIPO
"There is water"
There is water
Madzi Alipo means 'there is water'.
The project has two main purposes.
Firstly, to provide safe and clean drinking water in rural areas. Secondly, to train local communities to maintain and fix their water pumps, providing the skills required, handing back ownership and responsibility to those who use it.
Safe water
Most of rural Malawi is served by either deep or shallow boreholes, these provide drinking water for entire communities. Although simple in their design and function, they require regular maintenance to keep them in good working order. When these pumps stop working, communities resort to drinking from often contaminated open water sources.
Repair
Unlike many other water projects, we focus on repairing existing pumps, rather than drilling a new one when water stops flowing. The cost to repair a pump is only a fraction the cost to drill a new one. To us it makes no sense to drill again, when there is already an existing pump that can be repaired.
Training
The Madzi Alipo team work in the most rural parts of Malawi, teaching and facilitating the local community to restore water at their borehole. Our team explains the internal components, how to maintain each part, diagnose and repair. This way they can identify and fix a problem before it becomes more complicated and costly. Finally. they put their new knowledge and skills to the test and repair their own pump.
Empower & Ownership
Before training takes place, we ensure there is a mix of both men and women taking part. We are all about breaking down gender stereotypes and empowering all, women after all use the pumps far more than the men! Women engineers will spot any problems as they occur. As well as this, we facilitate the community in establishing a borehole committee. The committee take ownership of the borehole and set up a fund that families contribute towards to pay for any future servicing and repairs. This ownership also encourages the community to keep their borehole in top working order.
Going forward
Going forward we are now working on water testing and creating a nationwide hotline that any community can use to trouble shoot repairs and give assistance on where the closest store is stocking replacements parts. We are also building our database and further developing our app, with the status of every borehole that we and have worked on. This is now open source, for other charities and organisations to benefit from, logging the current status, service and repair history of the borehole.
THE FULL PROCESS
For each borehole, we survey the location and meet with the community. The community form a borehole committee of people who take responsibility for the pump. The committee collects funds to cover the repair costs of and are trained in servicing and repairs. During the repair, the borehole data is recorded into the Madzi Alipo app. After the initial repair, we carry out a follow up, to ensure the pump is in full working order. Further technical assistance and reporting can be made through the Madzi Alipo call centre. The call centre follows up on all boreholes in the database, these two services help create a picture of Malawi's current water situation providing feedback to agencies and the government, as well as practical troubleshooting for trained communities.
The Madzi Alipo database is an online resource which is funded by Fisherman's Rest Community Projects and the One Foundation. The database aims to provide accurate country wide data on water availability, improve collaboration between agencies working in the WASH sector, and enable accurate and timely feedback on borehole status’ for agencies, organisations, partners and individuals.
If you would like to join the Madzi Alipo app and database, we offer training and support to enable you to get the best out of the system. Please email madzialipo@fishermansrest.net
Be part of something great and help bring water to people living in rural communities here in Malawi. To make a donation, click the link below.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Monthly donations are the most effective way to help us carry out this vital work, one off donations also help provide clean water and change lives.
If you are not in a position to help financially, there are several ways in which you can still support Madzi Alipo. Simply by following us on our social media platforms and sharing our work with friends, family and colleagues, you can make a big difference in raising awareness. Alternatively, you could become a fundraiser.
We also believe in the power of prayer so if you're a person of faith, we would love your support and prayers.