Helping-Hand 2023

Through the 2023 Helping-Hand Appeal, you can support The Salvation Army’s work withcommunities to improve access to clean water and sanitation.

As I write, I am sat in London during the hottest few days the United Kingdom has experienced since records began. The grass is parched, the children’s splash parks have been turned off and hosepipe bans are being discussed. Despite this, I continue to have a free-flowing supply of clean, safe drinking water.

This is not the case for everyone. Water scarcity is a growing issue with 1.42 billion people – including 450 million children – living in areas of high or extremely high water vulnerability.

At the end of June, I travelled with colleagues from the Video Production Team to Karonga, Malawi, to visit The Salvation Army’s integrated water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) project. We interviewed community members and filmed project activities to be used in the 2023 Helping- Hand Appeal videos and resources.

Malawi is known as the ‘Warm Heart of Africa’, and that was certainly our experience. In each community and school that we visited, we were welcomed with song and dance. It was wonderful!

The Karonga District is situated in the north of the relatively thin, landlocked country. It is an approximately eight-hour drive from Kamuzu International Airport (KIA) in Lilongwe which we flew into, and more than 12 hours to the nation’s commercial city of Blantyre where The Salvation Army’s national headquarters is located.

As the main connection between Malawi and Tanzania to the north, the narrow, regularly potholed road between Lilongwe and Karonga is busy with many cars and goods lorries travelling back and forth. Regular checkpoints – designed to minimise smuggling between the neighbouring countries – further add to journey times.

The drive from Karonga town to each of the communities where the project activities take place is a further hour or more. All of this is to express just how remote the project locations are. In one community, a woman named Anastasia explained how other organisations had chosen not to work with her village as it was so difficult to reach. She stressed to me just how much it meant to her and her neighbours that The Salvation Army is there and has taken time to work with the community to construct a borehole for the surrounding villages.

Girls need no longer wake up early and gather water in fear of their safety.

The construction of boreholes is one element of this far-reaching, integrated project, the others being the provision of handwashing facilities and toilet blocks in schools, agricultural training for food security, and awareness raising around hygiene practices.

Whilst women used to have to wake early to collect water from the nearest stream or river – a water source which was shared with animals and easily became contaminated – a local borehole means they can now draw clean water more quickly and efficiently. This has not only led to a reduction in diarrhoea, cholera and other waterborne diseases, as you would expect, but it has had other impacts for women and girls.

The threat of violence and sexual assault was ever present for women and girls as they had to walk through wooded areas, thick with trees and bushes, to collect water.

Additionally, the high demand for the water, which was collected by scooping from shallow pools in the riverbed, meant that it often became busy and it was a necessity to wake early to beat the queues.

An accessible borehole, constructed in an open space alongside the houses, means women and girls need no longer wake up early and gather water in fear of their safety. The borehole is centrally located and for a large number is a short walk from their homes. The time that has been freed up simply through the installation of a local borehole means women can work on incomegenerating activities and girls can spend more time in school.

It must be noted that each borehole serves a lot of people. The provision of a single clean water source has been transformative, but it remains a long distance for many to reach.

Additional boreholes are needed to reduce the strain on the single borehole and reduce journey times for those living further away.

This is a truly integrated project, not only because of the variety of project activities but also because of the way it impacts all aspects of people’s lives.

Schools are a central component of the project. Without handwashing or drinking water facilities, children easily became sick – schools are an opportune place for illnesses to thrive and spread. Equally, the lack of toilet facilities added to the poor hygiene practices, as children and community members had no choice but to defecate outside.

Furthermore, without safe and private toilet facilities, girls were forced to go home when they got their period. This meant they regularly missed class and ultimately fell behind in their education.

In response to these challenges, the schools and communities partnered with The Salvation Army to construct toilet facilities – separate blocks for boys and girls – which have private cubicles, handwashing facilities and a room in which girls can manage their menstrual hygiene – essentially a space where they can clean themselves before returning to class.

Yet providing facilities is just part of the process. Attitude shifts and behavioural changes take time. Therefore a group of women in the community formed a mothers’ group, created to help raise awareness about hygiene issues in the school and to support girls as they reach puberty, advising them about what they need to do when they get their period, and simply being a support system so no student feels alone.

This care goes alongside other informationsharing methods such as dance and drama presentations which are used to highlight the importance of hygiene and sanitation in a fun and engaging way.

Young people are at the heart of this project. They are agents of change in their families and their wider communities, transforming attitudes and behaviours to keep themselves, their friends and their families safe and to ensure that all people can reach their potential.

Water is more than a drink on a hot day. It is children growing. It is continued education. It is time to build your business. It is the potential for equal opportunities. It is economic independence. Water is life!

This project falls within our Clean Water area of work, which will be the focus of next year’s Helping-Hand Appeal commencing on 1 January 2023. As well as Malawi, we also support Clean Water projects in China, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria and Tanzania.

Helping-Hand 2022, which is supporting our Gender Justice projects, will run until the end of this year. There is still plenty of time to support this year’s appeal either by using the resources to raise awareness, donating, or fundraising through the One in Three Challenge.

How can I help?

• £15 could give a person clean water for life through access to a sand dam

• £45 could provide training in the maintenance of boreholes

• £470 could construct a toilet in a school

• £1450 could install a shallow well alongside a sand dam

How can I donate?

• Give a donation to your local Salvation Army corps or Family Ministries group

• Donate online: salvationarmy.org.uk/ helpinghand2023

By Hayley Still