Project information
Start date: September 2025
End date: August 2027
Location: Kenema District, Eastern Sierra Leone
The Challenge
Kenema District is one of the most rural and underserved areas in Sierra Leone. High poverty rates and a lack of basic services, especially safe water and sanitation, trap communities in a cycle of hardship. Hand pumps, the primary source of drinking water, are often broken, with up to 40% being non-functional in rural areas.
These burdens fall disproportionately on women and girls, who are traditionally responsible for water collection and household hygiene. When pumps fail, they are the ones who must travel farther and wait longer, often sacrificing their time, health, and safety. Simultaneously, climate change is threatening traditional agriculture, which makes it even harder for them to build a stable income. This cycle of hardship leads to a ‘double exclusion’ for young women, who are not only left out of key decisions but also lack the resources to build their own livelihoods.
The lack of income-generating opportunities prevents communities from maintaining essential infrastructure, while poor WASH access harms health, reduces productivity, and limits school attendance, especially for girls. Breaking this cycle requires a solution that connects sustainable livelihoods with essential services, with women at the forefront of the change.
This project offers a way forward: linking safe water, income opportunities, and digital finance — with young women at the centre.
Our project
We are linking clean water, steady income, and digital technology, we are creating a system where women lead the way in solving their community’s biggest problems.
-
Empowering Women Entrepreneurs: We provide skills. Young women receive professional training to become “WASH Entrepreneurs.” They learn to repair broken water pumps, manufacture hygiene products like soap, and use climate-smart farming techniques to grow more food. A revolving loan fund provides the “seed money” they need to start these small businesses.
-
Sustainable Digital Finance: To stop the cycle of pumps breaking and staying broken, we are introducing a Mobile Money system. Instead of asking families for large sums of cash they don’t have, we help them make small, regular digital payments. This creates a community-managed fund that ensures there is always money available for repairs and spare parts.
-
Building Leadership and Rights: Through “Literacy Circles” and rights training, women gain the confidence to speak up. We also work closely with men and community leaders to change old attitudes, ensuring that women are respected as decision-makers and business owners.
This model is built to last. Once the women are trained and the digital payment system is running, the community no longer has to wait for outside help. At every step, women lead the change, providing services, managing resources, and taking on roles that keep the pumps fixed while benefiting their families and the wider community
What we’ll achieve
FOR WOMEN
-
Financial Independence: 700 women will be equipped to earn a sustainable income. Whether through technical repairs, selling hygiene products, or climate-smart farming, they will have a path to financial freedom.
-
Skills for Life: 120 women will be fully trained experts in pump mechanics and manufacturing, while 240 will gain essential literacy and financial management skills.
-
Leadership Roles: We expect at least half of the leadership positions in local community organizations to be held by women, giving them a real voice in how their villages are run.
FOR THE COMMUNITY
-
-
Reliable Clean Water: By setting up 4 mobile money payment systems, we ensure that water pumps don’t just get fixed once—they stay fixed. This means over 1,000 households will have consistent access to safe water.
-
Better Health and Safety: With functional pumps and local production of soap and hygiene products, families face less sickness. Women and girls will also be safer and save hours of time every day by having water close to home.
-
Food Security: Through training in new farming techniques, hundreds of families will be able to grow more resilient crops, ensuring they have enough to eat even as the climate changes.
-
Project funders
This project was kindly funded by a number of individual supporters and a handful of Trusts, primarily through our Big Give Appeal.