Mali and Botswana: Soroptimist Mali go for water!

As mentioned before, VAM got involved in the "Soroptimist go for water" project in Mali.

Sylvia Hooy joined Paul de Reus and Luud Roos on a trip to Mali to get acquinted and see the locations with her own eyes.

A week later Paul and ADAMA Sidibé, Soroptimist Bamako, joined Lesha in Botswana for the Regional Working Conference of Women for Water and discuss the Mali-case with other women involved in this type of projects.

Paul send the following report to all participants:

"Having enjoyed lots of African hospitality again in both Mali and Botswana, I want to start with the expression of many thanks to Mrs. Adama Sidibé Troaré and Mr. Sekou Traoré for their combined successful effort to organize a further step in the “Soroptimist Mali go for water” project.
It has been a pleasure to find all involved, on both governmental as well as users level working hard to bring our initial plan to a fruitful end.

During week 6 we have had meetings with the Malinese Ministries of Health (Mr. Maiga), Water and Women Affairs (Hon. Mrs. Maïga Sina Damba), as well as with the Majors of the Departments II and VI (Mr. Souleymane Dagon).
Furthermore, we met members of Eau-Vive in Mali (Mr. Alain Xavier Ky-Zerbo) as well as members of the Malinese Soroptimists. To get our footing we have visited several sites in Bamako to see the daily practice of water vendor ship as well as the degrading difficulties in fetching and transporting drinking water. Luud has made a foto impression of this trip.

Week 7 was spend in Botswana on the Women for Water Partnership conference in Gaborone. During this week contacts were made to may other women’s organisations e.g. from Nigeria (Mrs. Priscilla Achakpa, Women Environmental Programme), Lesotho, Sri Lanka (Mrs. Kusum Athukorala, NetWwater).
These groups showed preparedness to help and advise our project in political and practical matters.

At present we now have finalized the stage of getting all governmental and non governmental parties interested.
The next phase will be the set up of a meticulous plan for the sensibillization, acceptation and implementation of the Naïade technology at end users level.
In this phase we have to pay explicit attention to the three groups involved: the water vendors, - since they be faced with possible loss of income- the urban population - which does have access to more sources of water, both public and private - and the rural population, which does have typical social and cultural backgrounds to their water sources.

Since the African tradition in general connects women, young female and girls to water, the intensive cooperation and support of various women’s organization is required for this stage.
During a meeting in the next few weeks, a brief look-back to the Mali and Botswana trip will be given by the participants, as well as an overview of the present status. Furthermore, the detailed assignments to the various participants will be discussed."

No doubt you will find more information on Mali and the Botswana conference on this weblog in the next few days.

In the mean time, Marie Antionette is on her way to Sudan.