Rwanda Project
The Rwanda Project has been working since 2019 to provide the ESAPAN boarding school in Ngoma, Rwanda with an effective rainwater catchment system. Their current water source was found to be contaminated and unreliable. In September 2022, five team members traveled to ESAPAN to implement Phase 1 of the design, and the team is currently working towards implementing Phase 2.
Project Timeline
2019 Assessment Trip
In September 2019, the team traveled to the ESAPAN school in Ngoma, Rwanda to assess the issues faced by the community. The water provided by the government was found to be contaminated with Coliform bacteria, correlating to frequent illness amongst the students. The community then expressed their interest in a rainwater harvesting system since wells drilled in the past ran dry during the dry season. In anticipation of a future rainwater harvesting project, the team used surveying equipment to measure the distances between buildings and the dimensions of the buildings’ roofs.
2022 Implementation Trip
We spent several years designing a rainwater catchment system and planning out an implementation trip that would be safe for our travel team and the ESAPAN community. In September 2022, 4 students on our team traveled with our EWB-USA mentor to Rwanda. We installed 77.3 meters of gutters along the front side of the building. The gutters not only catch water for handwashing and drinking, but also prevent water from pouring on the students entering the building and eroding the school's walking paths. We worked with workers from the community to lay pipe and build foundations and retaining walls for the water storage tanks. We also worked with an engineer from Uganda to build a biosand filter that can clean up to 2600 Liters of rainwater per day. The cleaned water is safe enough to drink and is used by the students and locals in the community. While this does not solve all of the community’s water issues, it greatly improves the community's access to clean water throughout the year.
2024 Implementation Trip
Immediately after concluding our first Implementation trip, we began drafting a framework for Implementation 2. In our minds, Implementation 2 was an expansion phase, with the primary objective being an increase in volumetric storage capacity. We planned to extend the gutters on the school's largest building, install new tapstands/reservoir tanks, and upgrade the existing tap stand storage tanks. Altogether, the newly implemented changes would allow our system to collect rainwater ~twice as fast. The team worked tirelessly, verifying their calculations to ensure the existing infrastructure could withstand the newly introduced pressure and flow rates. The Implementation 2 trip was conducted in September 2024; at this time, there were ~770 beneficiaries of our project. For Implementation 3, the team plans on installing additional tap-stands at higher elevations within the school, making drinking/handwashing more available for all students.