Casamance: a multi-force attack to get drinking water to school children

«  Double Horizon is associated with a vocational training organization in the Paris region that helps students, themselves in a workforce development program, take part in a group project to ensure schooling for children in Senegal. It is an excellent example of what co-development can do! »

Catherine Chauvet-Catala

The eastern part of the Casamance region, in the southern extreme of Senegal, is relatively isolated from the rest of the world. Near its Velingara metropolitan area lies the village of Sare Adja, the poorest of the region's poor, with no means of transportation available to get there; there is no electricity, no drinking water, and even no healthcare infrastructure. Yet, the village has an elementary school serving the children of three neighboring villages. Double Horizon, based in the Paris region, has been helping it for several years, trying to alleviate the most serious hardships.
Founded in 1992 by a group of friends, this non-profit organization focuses on giving children in poor countries access to school and later to occupational training. It operates mainly in Senegal and the Philippines.

Drinking water, at last

In Sare Adja, Double Horizon knows the school's principal well: it is thanks to the organization that he could complete his studies. Together, they have set the new development priority: treat the water in the village's main well and install a solution that guarantees the villagers and schoolchildren the possibility of having drinking water fit for human consumption.
With help from Diarga Mballo, a former village resident who is now a department head at Sénélec (the state-owned electrical utility), and from a group of students at the Paris school of mining engineering, they opted for the installation of a solar-power-driven filter pump with a large tank. This would guarantee 10 liters of drinking water per day per person.

When asked for its support, the Veolia foundation contributed €5,000 and offered the technical expertise of a staff member of Veoliaforce staff. Students in a workforce development program in Montrouge, Clamart and Boulogne-Billancourt, and a humanitarian organization set up by ISTEC* are also pitching in and collecting additional funds. Thanks to this multi-force attack, the children of Sare Adja are henceforth protected from terrible waterborne diseases.

*A business and marketing college