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Sprigs Gives Update

2022 Donation Continues
Work in Africa with Charity: Water.

By James Calvin Jones (Fall 2023)

Every year, Sprigs donates to a charity that supports families in need, and one of those charities is Charity: Water. This year, Sprigs introduced Charity: Water’s and updated the community on the 2020 donation, building wells in Mozambique. For the 2022 donation, Sprigs chose to continue working with Charity: Water by donating $50,000 to another Africa project—this year, in Tanzania.

The largest and most populous East African country, Tanzania is home to 59.7 million people who speak English and Swahili and are either Christian or Muslim. Known for the Serengeti, Lake Victoria, and Mt. Kilimanjaro, Tanzania has a terrain as diverse as the people. Most of the land is agricultural, centered in northern farmlands that support economic centers along the eastern coast. An estimated two-thirds of the population live in rural areas in the semi-arid, mountainous areas of the southern region, the Highlands.(1) The region’s terrain and lack of modern sanitation make access to clean water difficult.

Because of this lack of clean water and other reasons, Tanzania ranks in the bottom fifteenth percent of nations on the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI bases a country’s development on the people's capability rather than the country’s economy. Measuring health, education, and standard of living, the HDI focuses on life expectancy, years of schooling, and gross national income per capita.(2) Combined, these assess a country’s capacity to live healthy, productive lives, which depends on having primary, physiological needs met. First among these needs is clean water.

Waterborne diseases and lack of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure pose significant problems for rural Tanzanians. According to a 2019 study by the National Institutes of Health, waterborne diseases account for 23,900 children deaths per year, and 60% of households do not have drinkable water.(3) Most recent reports reveal between 34 and 47 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, though this rate is declining.(4) Knowledge and greater access to resources have contributed to improving infant survival. Still, infant mortality is high and negatively affects other areas the HDI measures.

To live sustainably, no resource is more essential than water and no knowledge is more critical than good hygiene. This is why organizations like Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Charity Water (CW) have worked with countries like Tanzania for years. Together, CRS and CW have funded 83 projects. serving 20,320 Tanzanians. The goal is to provide sustainable access to clean water and each project’s task is different.(5) For the Tanzanian project, the task is to build piped water system tap stands.

The project center is the Highlands where only one- to two-thirds of the people have access to water. Here, the terrain makes water distribution points difficult to access. The project will construct a system of pipelines tailored to the terrain that delivers water to multiple distribution points. The pipes will transfer water from the source to a holding center which will store the water connected to households or community tap stands.(6) Yet, accessibility is only one half of the solution: sustainability is the other half.

Through Community Based Water Supply Organizations, members of the community are trained to operate water points. This increases stakeholder investment and creates jobs. In addition to economic growth, communities gain greater awareness of sanitation practices through Community-Led Total Sanitation programs and UNICEF’s Three Star Program.(7) These approaches foster change in how people view hygiene, connecting better hygiene to cleaner water to healthier, more productive lives.

Sprigs is honored to be a part of this project. Yet, having this honor is not possible without the blessing that is the generous support from you, the members of the Sprigs community. Because of you, Sprigs can help in providing clean water to families around the world. By helping families, we help communities, and by helping communities, we work towards a better world, a world closer to what God intended for us all, no matter where we are in the world. Thank you.

References

(1) World Factbook: Africa (2023 August 23). “Explore All Countries: Tanzania.” Central Intelligence Agency. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/tanzania/

(2) United Nations Development Program (2023). “Human Development Index.” United Nations Human Development Reports. https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/indicies/HDI

(3) Tesha, I., Machunda, R., Njau, K., Mpolya, E. (2019 May 20). Water-handling patterns and associated microbial profiles in relation to hygiene in Babati Town, Tanzania. Journal of Environmental Public Health 2019: 5298247. DOI: 10.1155/2019/5298247.

(4) based on Macrotrends (https://www.macrotends.net), World Bank Open Data (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.IMRT.IN?locations=TZ), and UNICEF (https://data.unicef.org/country/tza/)

(5), (6), (7) Catholic Relief Services. (2023) “Tanzania Pipe Stands.”