Rwanda
Folomina’s face lights up when she talks about her toilet. Two years ago, the state of water and sanitation in Folomina’s village was dire. She and the other 20 families in her community would walk two hours each day for water. The sanitation situation was just as bad. Most latrines didn’t have roofs, so they…
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Didacienne had five children and no home of her own. Her husband died nearly 25 years ago in the Rwandan genocide, and after that she had few options to provide for her family – they lived with various family members to get by. And without water in their village, life was difficult. For Didacienne and…
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When communities don’t have access to water, children have to spend hours every day fetching water. In many cases this causes them to miss school and miss out on an education that could enable them to have a better future. This is not the case for the kids in Kisaro Sector in rural Rwanda. Schoolchildren…
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“It was like a dream to us,” says Lilian. She says the people in her community never thought they would have safe water. “We used to wake up very early in the morning to go fetch water,” Lilian says. She and others in her community in Gicumbi District, Rwanda would lose hours each day walking…
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Peter and his five children are waiting on safe water. “We wake up in the morning around four o’clock, because the first thing we do as the whole family is collect water,” Peter explains. “We have to use flashlights so that we can see the way.” Peter, his wife, three sons, and two daughters walk…
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When water arrived at Binaga School in the remote countryside of Rwanda, it gave students the future. It provided the foundation for them to dream. The school sits in a peaceful valley, surrounded by lush green hills. Students in their crisp yellow uniforms laugh as they meander through freshly painted corridors on their way to…
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Sweetly sleeping, two-year-old Solange lays contentedly in her mom’s arms. Marie Louise’s other children are at school. This scene, almost serene, feels very different from what Marie Louise says life looked like a few years ago. A few years ago, her village didn’t have a safe water source. Growing up, Marie Louise never had the…
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Beatrice and her neighbors have an acute understanding of the value of time. Three years ago, women and children in her community of Ngoma in Rulindo District, Rwanda, were losing hours every day fetching water from an unprotected spring. Kids lost time they could be in school – arriving late, leaving early, and sometimes missing…
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Simon’s exuberant smile gives away his passion for his task at hand: improve the health of his village through better hygiene and sanitation. Simon was born in this village in the rural hillsides of Rwanda and has lived here all 46 years of his life. Growing up, he says they lacked clean things in the…
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