Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

OFSDAT is determined in changing social behaviour and building basic and well-managed sanitation systems in poor communities across Africa.

The number of people living in sub-Saharan Africa has nearly doubled in the last 25 years, but access to sanitation and water has improved minimally, leaving millions behind, according to the UN.

In countries in sub-Saharan Africa with the best water coverage rates, as many as 1 in 4 people still lack adequate sanitation. Rural residents are often worse off than urban residents when it comes to lack of access to water and sanitation, and funding is uneven and insufficient in the area, according to UNICEF.

Water

Most overseas development aid goes to countries that are already doing well, and while water and sanitation access is far behind in rural areas, both external and domestic funding goes primarily to urban systems. Underprivileged urban populations end up spending much more money on water, while wealthy people living in urban areas pay less for cleaner water and better sanitation systems.

The lack of water is an often insurmountable obstacle to helping oneself. You can't grow food, you can't build housing, you can't stay healthy, you can't stay in school and you can't keep working.

Without clean water, the possibility of breaking out of the cycle of poverty is incredibly slim.

For women and children especially, this crisis is real. It effects every minute of the day.

With unclean water sources often miles from villages, many of the able-bodied members of a community are forced to spend hours each day simply finding and transporting water. The typical container used for water collection in Africa, the jerry can, weighs over 40 pounds when it's completely full.

Imagine how demanding it would be to carry the equivalent of a 5-year-old child for three hours out of each day. And some women carry even more, up to 70 pounds in a barrel carried on the back.

Our goal is to bring clean, sustainable water supplies to within a 1km (1/2 mile) of a village. By doing so, communities can be freed to begin working themselves out of poverty.

When you give to help build a well, you'll make sustainable agriculture possible. You will allow children to get back to school instead of collecting dirty water all day.

You'll help fathers find more time to care for their family, maintain a farm, and even run a small business.

Sanitation and Hygiene

Poor sanitation and high-risk hygiene behaviours confine the poor in a vicious cycle of poor health, environmental degradation, malnutrition, reduced productivity and loss of incomes. For women and adolescent girls, the lack of privacy and dignity has deleterious impacts on health and safety, self-esteem, education and well-being.

More than 70 per cent of the population in Eastern and Southern Africa (340 million people) have no access to basic sanitation services.

Among these, 98 million people (19 per cent) practise open defecation, 179 million use unimproved facilities and 63 million shared sanitation facilities.

Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, have by far the largest number of people in the region with no access to basic sanitation services, while countries like Eritrea, South Sudan and Ethiopia have the largest proportions and numbers of people practising open defecation.

The numbers who don’t have access to basic hygiene services are even higher (386 million) as more than per cent of the population in the region don’t wash hands with soap and water. In schools, for example, over 50 million (27 per cent) school-age children have no access to sanitation services while 117 million (62 per cent) have no access to hand washing facilities in schools.

OFSDAT is working across the sanitation management chain in promoting and supporting a range of technologies and systems from containment to re-use and disposal.

OFSDAT stresses on demand creation in communities where open defecation is still common; improve supply of sanitation products and services in communities where open defecation is low but there are high proportions of unimproved latrines (i.e. where demand exists but the availability of affordable and aspirational sanitation solutions are limited); and promote innovative financing solutions in communities where basic sanitation coverage is high, but some households (often the poorest and marginalized) have yet to be reached. This is done in all contexts – urban or rural, development or humanitarian – targeting the most vulnerable.

OFSDAT believes that our donations and investment in latrines and ending open defecation is more than just about health. It is also about providing people with dignity and safety. OFSDAT partners with governments and others in community-led initiatives to put a stop to open defecation.

...lets bring clean, sustainable water supplies to within a 1km (1/2 mile) of a village.

OFSDAT is determined in changing social behaviour and building basic and well-managed water and sanitation systems in poor communities across Africa.

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Kingsempire Place, After Citiscape Villa, Opposite Human Right Radio Station, Game Village, Kukwaba, FCT-Abuja, Nigeria

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Email: info@ofsdat.org
Phone: +(234) 809 249 9990

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