By developing a model in one village we have been able to scale that up to 9 more villages.
We have developed a large network of local contacts in Gambia independent from the government.
We are determined that when we “finish a village” it will have the ability to ensure its own long term supply of clean water. This is the model we aimed for & achieved at Bafaluto, the first village. We will return to Bafaluto later.
What influences the cost of providing a clean water system for a village? Firstly there is the current population and projected natural population growth. With hindsight, the availability of reliable clean water had a larger impact on the future growth of the village than we had anticipated; not just by improving the overall health of the villagers, but there was an inflow of people who wanted to come to live in the village. Once we had established the current population & figures for 5, 10 & 15 years ahead, we used the World Health Organisation’s of water consumption per person per day. We then had a figure of how many litres or cubic metres of water per day we had to “lift” from the Borehole up into the elevated Storage Tank from where gravity would push it around the village to a number of strategically located Standpipes. (Mathematical aside: WHO’s recommended figure is 30 lts /person/day. Bafaluto current pop. is 850. Hence, 850 *30lts = 25,500 lts / day. One tonne is 1,000 lts, so we have to have the capacity to lift 25.5 tonnes of water every day from the Borehole at a depth of c.300 ft to the elevated Storage Tank 30 ft above the ground.)