Bringing Water to Marwa Village 2018

We are Ohio State students enrolled through the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering and the School of Environment and Natural Resources working with students from the University of Dodoma in Tanzania, to bring water to the remote Tanzanian village of Marwa and in doing so, address the complex development needs of the Villagers. By bringing water to Marwa village the lives of the people will be changed forever. We want to continue changing lives, but we need your generous support!

We are a part of the Ohio State Sustainable and Resilient Tanzanian Community program which is an international interdisciplinary service-learning program and our first project is Maji Marwa - bringing water to Marwa Village. Maji is the Swahili word for water. Marwa is a rural village, with a predominantly Maasai population, located along the Pangani River in the Kilimanjaro Region of Tanzania. Our long-term goal is to design and construct a water distribution and filtration system taking water from the Pangani River and pumping it to all the sub-villages.

Through the valuable support from Donors from our first Buckeye Funder Campaign last year, we built our first rainwater harvesting system onto the Village medical clinic.  In the months following, we received positive feedback from the local doctor and nurses that this system has positively contributed to improved health and safety for village residents particularly the young mothers and new born babies. 

We rigorously documented the construction process of the rainwater harvesting system onto the Village medical clinic and after reflection and study we have identified a number of key innovations that we can contribute to the local community to improve the efficiency and cost effectiveness of building rainwater harvesting system in Marwa village. Our short-term goal is to install rainwater harvesting systems onto all public facilities across the four sub-villages of Marwa.

The money raised through this campaign will be used to pay for the materials and equipment employing local tradespeople and to facilitate the communications and planning for the construction of our next rainwater harvesting system onto the primary school in Marwa. Any funds raised surplus to our need for the rainwater harvesting system for Marwa primary school will be committed to building future systems in the community and for education and sensitization programs for improved health and sanitation initiatives related to bringing water to Marwa. We are committed to working with the people of Marwa Village and building their capacity and skills so that the contributions we share are sustainable.

Marwa's main source of water is the Pangani River, a water flow off of Mt. Kilimanjaro. At present the women and young girls walk five to seven hours each day, every day, to collect water for domestic household and personal use. This includes everyday providing their children with at least 1 gallon of water each to take to school to enable them to wash their hands after using the washroom and to contribute to the cleaning of their classrooms and school facilities. As we bring water to Marwa we are working to improve the health and education of the children and their Families.

Your support will help make a real difference to the lives and future of the people of Marwa. Please embrace this opportunity – if you have any questions or suggestions please contact any of our project leaders. Asante sana (thank you in Swahili). Ashe oleng (thank you in Ki Maasai).