Clean Water: The First Step

Water for Life

The primary strategy for achieving MDGs in Burkina Faso is to focus on creating accessibility to safe drinking water. CLEAN WATER stood out as the lowest common denominator, the single most important element that is directly or indirectly integrated with all 8 MDGs.

Message from the UN

“On average a woman in West Africa walks a distance of 5 KM carrying 20 liters of water each day. Time collecting water from distant locations prevents women from engaging in productive work and sometimes deepens gender disparities. Just in the last 24 hours 6000 people mostly children will have died from lack of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation.”

Cheick Sidi Diarra, United Nations High Representative for Least Developed, Landlocked and Small Island Developing States

In 2008, BARKA Foundation held numerous meetings with women in the city and in rural regions of Burkina to hear their thoughts about the greatest problems facing them and to determine how best to proceed. Unanimously, all the women pointed to clean potable water and the distance they must travel to carry water to their families as their greatest issue.

During these meetings, the women agreed to work with BARKA Foundation, to cooperate and co-create a model for achieving MDGs. These talks were extremely empowering for the women and resulted in the formation of BARKA’s first micro-finance initiative with a group of 87 women.

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