Dabane Trust

Water Supplies

Reliable clean water supplies are essential as a basis for life.

Dabane works with rural communities to develop clean, palatable water supplies for household use, and also to provide water for small-scale irrigation and livestock.

installing a Joma pump

a simple piston made by Dabane

Water supply systems are chosen to be appropriate to local conditions:

• Sand-abstraction used on large ostensibly dry rivers;
• sand dams or tubewells are used on smaller dry rivers;
• water-harvesting tanks in areas without rivers and where groundwater is very deep.

Each of Dabane's water supply systems are designed to be operated and maintained within the available resources of the surrounding community.

Pump sustainability is excellent. Within Zimbabwe, where Dabane has been deploying these technologies in remote areas, systems have been successfully maintained by local women for up to fifteen years.

Women use their own methods of management, within their daily routines, to keep their pumps and gardens going.

Many undertake basic pump repairs and maintenance independently, with a minimum of spare parts and tools.

a well-earned cool drink of water

The ability and confidence to provide clean water, foodstuffs and nutrition for their families in times of drought (often when husbands are absent) have proved very important and empowering for women in the communities with which we work.