Global Women's Water Initiative: Cameroon - Alice and Catherine BSF Project

Name: Catherine Mwengella and Alice Balemba

Location: Mwangalle Village, Konye Sub-Division, Mosanja Village, Itoki Village and Masaka Village, Southwest region of Cameroon

Situation Before: In addition to a lack of clean drinking water, these villages are also in need of comprehensive sanitation and hygiene education programs.

Vision for Change: Catherine and Alice plan to build two ready-to-use Bio-Sand filters and provide WASH education in the villages. They are committed to improving the health of the communities by providing sustainable access to clean water and initiating a greater awareness of good hygiene practices.

The Global Women's Water Initiative is a powerful partnership between A Single Drop, Crabgrass and Women's Earth Alliance. Mama Alice and Mama Catherine attended a Women and Water Training hosted and sponsored by the GWWI. Here they learned powerful tools to bring clean water education and technologies back to their village.

At this training, Mama Alice and Mama Catherine learned to build the Biosand Filter. When they returned home, they worked with the community to enhance their water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) education and to introduce the Biosand Filter.

With your support, Mama Alice and Mama Catherine can receive a refresher training and a seed grant to launch their projects.

REFRESHER TRAINING - During this training, a BSF technology trainer will come to their village to train their support staff and have the women assist in conducting the training to solidify their knowledge of the technology. The refresher training is key to their success in that it will build the capacity of the women's support staff, and the trainer will help them create the production facility and outreach plan to promote the filters.

SEED GRANT - This $1500 investment will be the start-up capital for Alice and Catherine to build their production facility and start installing and selling the filters in their village!