Water is often referred to as Africa’s gold, but in many barren rural areas it is hope for the future. The Rainwater Harvesting Project is helping children to harvest that hope.
The project started off with schoolchildren who used to have to walk more than half a kilometre to a well for drinking water. Now they are able to harvest enough water to drink, to clean their classrooms, to make bricks to build extra classrooms and to grow a vegetable garden, the produce of which is used in the home economics classes.
Mahashe Secondary School, like most other schools in Limpopo province, had been experiencing water problems since its inception in 1996. The school approached the Save the Sand project for help.
Save the Sand is a programme coordinated by an NGO called the Association for Water and Rural Development (Award), which deals with issues of water resources and supply in the heavily populated and poorly resourced area of the Sand River catchments. “Approximately 37% of schools in Limpopo province have inadequate access to water, while nearly 76% have inadequate sanitation,” says Sharon Pollard, coordinator of the Save the Sand project.
The project provided the school with seed money, which was used to build water storage tanks. The tanks served as a central pivot to develop awareness, capacity and conceptual understanding within the school and the surrounding community. Teachers and learners who took an extramural interest in the rainwater-harvesting tanks and associated educational and maintenance activities then decided to establish a harvesting club.
The club is responsible for maintaining the tanks and overseeing the use of water. Members lock the tanks to ensure proper and controlled use of water. The club has also been instrumental in extending the project to three other schools. The Rainwater Harvesting Project is currently working in nine schools, including Mahashe. The project, framed by new water legislation, works with schools that lack access to water and sanitation and supports integrated catchment management.
“The educational orientation adopted by the project is to provide information and conceptual understanding with which to initiate and support development processes,” explains Pollard. “We have found that the different groups involved in the rainwater projects require different levels of input and types of information.”
The provision of employment to a minimum of two local apprentices during the construction of the tanks encourages community involvement in the project, helping bridge the gap between communities and the teachers and learners.
The message-driven, information-based project is designed to support the new outcomes-based education system. It allows for participants to develop their own curricula and interpret activities in a way that is contextually relevant.
“Teachers benefit from learning about the curriculum and how they can improve their teaching practices, while learners like to engage with information that supports stimulating and exciting activities,” says Pollard. “Principals, on the other hand, warm to information about how rain collection can improve their roles as school managers and how they can provide a better learning environment for their children.”