What is the Living Water Society?
Mozambique faces a huge challenge in providing safe water and sanitation facilities to its people. Access to safe water is enjoyed by only 50.2% of the population while access to sanitation is estimated at 39%. In addition, lack of adequate physical planning and increasing populations in cities has led to overcrowding with little space for effective sanitation facilities and for introducing piped water systems.
Inappropriate household water management, disposal, and personal hygiene practices contribute considerably to unhygienic conditions which exist close to communities, creating a breeding ground for disease and the possibility of diarrhoea, dysentery, and cholera. Repeated diarrhoea is a major cause of malnutrition and underweight, leading to susceptibility to other illnesses. Diarrhoea causes 13 percent of under-five deaths. Epidemiological data show high rates of faecal-oral transmitted diseases.
Women, with the major responsibility for collection of water and for child care at household level, perform a key role in water and sanitation and are potentially significant agents of change .
Although efforts are being made to increase rural water coverage, with some positive results , the situation is still far from desirable. The seventh Millennium Development Goal is “to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water” meaning that around 9285 more wells need to be drilled, in Mozambique, until the year 2015, for this goal to be achieved .
The United Methodist Church (UMC) in Mozambique has joined the civil society efforts to attain this MDG by sponsoring the drilling of some wells in remote locations where it operates. These are mainly rural areas, outside the targets of most ongoing rural water supply programs in Mozambique. With the support of its counterpart in Missouri (U. S. A.), Lifewater International and IRD , small rigs with maximum depth drilling capacities varying of 30, 60 and 100m were acquired by the UMC in Mozambique, as well as basic equipment like a truck and a compressor. With this equipment and funds raised and donated by the congregations in the United States (Missouri Area), the UMC in Mozambique, through its department Associação Água Viva (SAV), has drilled more than 40 wells since 2005. Around 20 more wells were drilled by subcontracting third party commercial drillers, when the soils and water depth were not adequate to be handled by SAV equipment. In most locations were wells were drilled, hygiene and sanitation basics were taught to the local inhabitants.