The women in Mugango have seen steady growth in business this year, including their single largest sale in August. The Africa School Assistance Project (ASAP), a US-based NGO working in the Mwanza region, purchased 30 water filters to be installed in each classroom at the four schools and a girls’ dormitory that they support. Thanks to ASAP and Safe Water Mugango, hundreds of children in the Mwanza region now have access to safer drinking water while they are at school. Additionally, 14 more water filters were placed in Mara region schools, the LCRC in Nyegina, and the Musoma Regional Library thanks to donations from 2019 Kili Climbers and Safe Water Ceramics of East Africa.
The women were also invited to participate in four exhibitions this year, including the Uhuru Torch as it passed through the Mara region. The annual celebration was attended by hundreds of people and provided the women with an excellent opportunity to educate the public about the dangers of drinking contaminated water and the benefits of the water filters they manufacture.
Although $35 may seem like a relatively low-cost to pay for safe drinking water, the seasonality of the Mara leaves many families cash-poor through long stretches of the year. Now that the Mara region is in the middle of harvest, the women are hopeful that their past efforts to educate their communities will be fruitful. We wish them the best of luck in their efforts through the end of the year.
If you would like to supplement the women’s efforts this holiday season, consider purchasing a filter on behalf of a classroom in the Mara region. We will coordinate with the women to place a filter in a classroom of one of the schools where the 4H Career Pathways clubs are active, providing the students there with clean water. It will also allow the students in the healthcare tract of the program to learn about the science behind the filter and share that knowledge with their own families and communities.