Managing Water Resources Equitably and Sustainably so Everyone Can Prosper

Ghaith is a 45-year-old farmer in Taiz’s Sharab Al Rona district. For years, his wife spent several hours every day going to and from the nearest well to collect water for all their household needs. Eventually, however, the daily journey became too painful for her due to chronic rheumatism—so their 19-year-old daughter and 10-year-old daughter took over the chore. “Carrying 20 liters of water over such a long distance every day is really wearing on my daughters—just as it did on their mother,” Ghaith told the RSD team. “It’s especially hard on my youngest daughter. She’s not only aching physically, but she had to drop out of school and her heart is also aching to return to her studies and her friends. What makes it worse is that some wells in the area are unclean and contaminated, which leads to the spread of illnesses, and my children often get diarrhea, too.”

RSD targeted Ghaith’s family during one of its rainwater harvesting interventions, and now they have a 2,000-liter water tank right beside their house. Each time the rain fills it up with the runoff from their roof, that’s 100 trips to the well that his daughters don’t have to make, bringing back heavy 20-liter jugs. The household water filter they received as a part of the intervention is also helping them stay healthy. Thus, by equipping Ghaith’s family to harvest a natural resource like rainfall sustainably, RSD’s intervention also increases the availability of other resources that they need in order to prosper—like time and health. “Now my family and I have clean water at home,” says Ghaith. “My youngest daughter is attending school again, and the children don’t get sick as often now that we’ve been using the water filter.”