Tanzania - Project History

Ngelenge is a small village located along the Ruhuhu River in the Ludewa district of southwestern Tanzania in with approximately 2,200 people. The area is bordered to the east by the Livingstone Mountains and to the west by Lake Nyasa.

In 2001, the villagers of Ngelenge met to discuss how they could improve their lives. They agreed that their highest priorities were to build a health dispensary, securing safe supply of water, building additional classroom in the local school and improving agricultural practices. The outcome of that meeting was the creation of their own organization, NGEDEA, dedicated to assist development not just of Ngelenge but also of neighboring villages the Manda ward. In 2003 NGEDEA became officially registered as a Tanzania NGO.  There are two chapters of NGEDEA, one in Dar Es Salaam and one in Ngelenge. 

NGEDEA became a partner with the San Francisco Professional EWB chapter in 2004. Since the collaboration began volunteers from both organization have made 6 joint trips to Ngelenge, including two assessment trips in 2005, two implementation trips in 2006 and 2007 and two facilitation trips in 2007.

The collaboration began with a Pre-Assessment Trip [pdf]  in May 2005.  It was learned during this trip that the highest priority for the village was a health dispensary.  The village had already raised $1,000 and built the foundation for the building.  In September, 2005 a team of 5 EWB members traveled on a Full Assessment [pdf] To begin the collaboration between the two groups, the EWB team brought materials to complete the health dispensary building and construction began.  During the assessment trip, EWB and NGEDEA worked together to establish the highest priorities of the village.  These priorities, aside from the dispensary, were better access to clean drinking water and improved irrigation.  At the time our partnership began, there was only one hand-pumped well with clean water in the village and irrigation was done by spreading water by hand from plant to plant. 

Based on interactive workshops and discussions, a number of solutions were identified to meet the goals of the village. In 2006, an Implementation Trip [pdf] was undertaken to begin to address the high priorities of water, health and agriculture.  NGEDEA and EWB worked together to drill three 50m bore wells in the main village as well as to install a pilot slow sand filter system that would serve community members living a 40 minute walking distance from the wells.  In addition surveying was done for a future distribution system and for plots for pilot irrigations systems.

In 2007, another Implementation Trip [pdf] was undertaken in order to begin introducing irrigation technology.  NGEDEA and EWB worked together to install three pilot plots using drip irrigation, a very low water use irrigation system available in Tanzania.  Community members were trained on installation and maintenance of the systems and the plots were put under the ownership of women’s groups within the community.  The future goal is that a micro-finance loans will make these systems accessible to the community members and that they will be self propagating once credit and materials are available.  During this implementation trip, more groundwork was also laid for a future water distribution system.

Two follow up trips were taken in August [pdf] and December [pdf] of 2007 to evaluate the installed systems.  Issues were found with water quality in two of the new wells, though the contaminants are not harmful to health, they make the water unpleasant to drink.  In addition, there have been setbacks to the irrigation systems due to soil nutrient levels and pest management.  EWB and NGEDEA are working together to find solutions to these issues.  In Summer 2008, EWB and NGEDEA are planning to begin implementation of a village wide water distribution system which will greatly improve potable water access for everyone in the community.   Click here to learn more about our goals for 2008 and 2009.   

These projects were enabled through the help of many generous donors including:

An up to date summary of the various on-going projects (health dispensary,  water system improvements, local water fund development, irrigated gardens, fostering of a local project management) can be found in the report from the 2008 Facilitation Trip [pdf]. A presentation on the implementation trips can be viewed here [pdf].

Two videos describing the project and showing the village can be seen online here:

 

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