Child Protection

In Muchimazi, Nyimba District, access to safe water is helping children stay healthy, spend more time learning and giving families more time for their livelihoods.

For children, the school day once began long before the first lesson.

Before sunrise, Judy, a learner at Muchimazi School, would leave home carrying an empty container. Her first task was finding enough water for her family.

She would walk to the community’s only borehole and often join long queues of women, children and elderly people waiting for their turn.

There was another problem: the water was not safe to drink.

Assessments by ChildFund and its partners found high levels of iron in the borehole water, reaching 5.1 mg/L, making it unsuitable for human consumption. Yet for many families, it was their only available source.

“Sometimes we even missed classes struggling for water,” Judy recalls.

On some days, she returned home around midday, exhausted and having missed most of her lessons. Time that should have been spent learning, playing and preparing for her future was spent collecting water.

Judy was not alone.

When water becomes a barrier to education

Across Muchimazi, hundreds of families faced the same daily struggle.

For Elizabeth, a mother of four, collecting water could mean spending an entire morning at the overcrowded borehole.

“You would sit there from morning until midday and still not get water,” she says. “If the borehole was too crowded, we had no choice but to fetch water from nearby swamps and streams where animals also drank.”

The consequences went beyond the hours spent waiting. Unsafe water increased exposure to waterborne illnesses, including diarrhoeal diseases and typhoid, while long queues meant children missed lessons and parents lost time for household responsibilities and livelihoods.

At school, the impact was visible in attendance, punctuality and the learning environment.

As Head Teacher Lovemore Mweenda explains, reliable water is now making a difference for learners and the wider school community.

A safer source of water

Through the Muchimazi Water Improvement Project, ChildFund, with support from DuPont Water Solutions and Davis & Shirtliff Zambia, has helped provide a more reliable source of safe water through a modern ultra-filtration water purification plant.

The purified water now serves:

• 180 households, with reliable access to safe and clean water.
• 670 learners and 35 teachers at Muchimazi School, who benefit from a dependable daily water supply.
• More than 1,500 monthly visitors to Muchimazi Clinic, who now have access to clean water during their visits.

More time to learn

For Judy and her classmates, perhaps the most important change is something that cannot be measured in litres: time.

The hours once spent walking to water sources or waiting in queues can now be spent in the classroom. Learners can arrive on time, participate more consistently in lessons and have more time for reading, homework, sports and play.

Reliable water is also supporting a healthier school environment. Learners can wash their hands regularly, sanitation facilities can be maintained more effectively, and the school can reinforce good hygiene practices.

Across Muchimazi, families now have a safer alternative to the streams and swamps they relied on when the borehole was overcrowded or unavailable. Access to treated water supports better hygiene and reduces exposure to contaminated water.

For mothers and caregivers, it also means more time to care for children, manage households and engage in livelihood activities.

The nearby clinic is benefiting too. A reliable supply of clean water helps maintain hygiene, support infection prevention and provide a safer environment for patients, healthcare workers and visitors.