Clean Drinking Water for the Rural Poor in Yemen

Female: Yemen is mostly desert; dry, hot and humid. Water is a priority and with limited access to safe drinking water it was an obvious place to start. It’s a key way of helping the rural poor.

On the dry Yemeni plains there’s little rain. Here costly old diesel engines pump up a limited supply of groundwater into tanks. Having a guaranteed constant supply of water is vital to the farmers for self-sufficiency and production of cash crops. It’s also the only local source of drinking water. Each day the main role of the local girls from each nearby village is to spend hours carrying water to their homes on donkeys. But water is just one project here, there’s a combination approach to development.

Mustapha Al Badani: Instead of having one project, we have an integrated number of projects to improve people's lives. The integrated number of projects in the development went though a number of stages. The implementation starts preparing the choice of possibilities, then select the most appropriate idea.

Female: Al-Awla is one of three closely-knit farming village communities in this region that are involved in combining water, health and education projects. Mustapha and Suheir are responsible for coordinating the work between the three villages. The development funds pay the bulk of the costs. But it is the villagers’ project - they’re providing their labor and their materials. The water tower in Al-Awla is nearing completion and the main water pump is being installed. This pipeline will bring stability and significant long term economic benefits to the villagers.

Suheir Baresh: People here rely on agriculture and it’s the basic means of income and because there is less water in the area this has had a bad effect on agriculture, there’s less agriculture causing high unemployment among men and women and the number of poor to be severe. And this directly affects women who are now working on the farms collecting water, feeding animals, rather than getting education. That applies to women and girls and they suffer from lack of skills to help her husband or her house.

Female: In the second village - Beir Mosa - as part of the integrated approach, the Community Centre is being extended to provide healthcare and much needed education facilities. With girls now freed from long hours of collecting water more are free to go to school. With less than half the girls under 12 in the Yemen attending school it’s an important step forward. It’s the very first day in class for many of these girls.

Mustapha al badani: They started with 2 girls only at the 2nd level and now in every village the number is varying. in Al-Awla there are 60 students in 1st level and in Deir Ar Redaini they started with nothing and now there are 30-35 students. And the same goes for Beir Mosa.

Female: For this school to function properly it needs professionally trained teachers. Here the integrated project is challenging traditional customs and roles.

Hoda Ibrahim: I studied for 2 years at the anti- illiteracy campaign and I was very good in class. And then I was approached and asked to leach young children.

Female: Hoda is only 17, she's training as a teacher. But, at 17 traditions dictate that her brothers are nervous whether she should be filmed. Permission is eventually granted, but it’s an illustration that male acceptance of new roles that women are starting to take on is at a very early stage.

Afra: There is a very, very strong division of responsibilities, in labor, among men and women. Women’s responsibilities are inside the households, running the family matters, taking care of the kids. They are not part of the public arena at all, at any level and villagers when they take group decisions, women are excluded from those decisions so it's men who get together, discuss and decide.