1 5 2023 Tanzania Project Follow Up email

Dear Supporters of the Monduli District Water Harvesting Project,

Happy New Year! We are writing to provide a follow-up on the progress of our project and thank you again for your generous support. First, thank you for your continued support of our project from beginning to end. From a plan formulated at the beginning of 2021, we can proudly say that we have successfully achieved our goal of providing clean and accessible water to the Maasai community in Monduli by constructing our 100,000-liter tank in Losimingori. In the past six months since we built the tank, it has supported over five-thousand people in the area with clean water, especially during the dry season, when it is challenging to find water.

This year, our goal was to raise $30,000 for another water tank of a similar size. Still, after careful consideration and consultation with student leaders and community members, we split the funds into three projects to be more effective and water efficient for the community. These projects focused on improving water accessibility and infrastructure in the region. Two of the projects are 40,000-liter water tanks constructed around Losimingori and Nanja and have already begun to impact their community. The third project is a filtration system for a homemade pond that will provide cleaner water to those nearby.

This year, eight student leaders joined the efforts to continue what we started. After months of preparation, we collected on-ground for the first time on December 19th. We spent five jam-packed days collecting data about the impact of the current water harvesting unit through nearly 40 interviews with local community members.

After our on-ground research, we are happy to report that the current water harvesting unit has successfully and significantly impacted the Maasai community's daily lives. The women no longer have to walk long distances to fetch water, and children can attend school without the burden of survival tasks. The current water harvesting unit saved an average of over 8 hours of walking per day. According to local teachers, the enrollment and engagement in class has doubled since the water tank was built. This has opened up opportunities for education and economic growth within the community. For example, the water tank allows many Maasai to focus on agriculture to further support their families financially. We could have never guessed how life-changing this water harvesting unit could be to the community.

In addition to research, some of our student leaders hosted workshops for several skills. Our most crucial workshop was the technology literacy course. This course taught underprivileged Maasai the necessary tech skills required to succeed in our modern world. Other workshops included art, dance, and singing sessions, which were undoubtedly fun to participate in and enjoy.

Towards the end of our visit, we hosted an offsite with community members to brainstorm other potential solutions to the water harvesting problem besides just water tanks. The experience was very enlightening as the community provided several insights on issues we didn't know existed, helping us brainstorm at full capacity as a team. The result was a large selection of ideas, all of which can be prototyped and perhaps implemented at scale.

In the future, we plan to create a program that subsidizes part of the cost of smaller, low-cost water harvesting units. This will make it easier for families in more remote areas to access clean water. This will be a crucial step towards providing clean water to the 55,000 people living in Monduli.

As of right now, our student leaders are sifting through the data and insights we gathered during our stay in Tanzania to put together a presentation for the Lions Club Global Summit in March this year.

We are grateful for your support and are committed to continuing our work toward providing clean and accessible water to the Maasai community. If you have any questions about the data collected, feel free to reach out to anyone on our team, and we will be sure to reach out to you.

Sincerely,

The Water Harvesting Team