Portuguese NGO brings drinking water to a thousand people in the centre of mozambique

The village of Chipaco, in central Mozambique, now has clean drinking water and it is the most recent beneficiary of the projects of the Portuguese non-governmental organisation (NGO) Big Hand, the organisation announced Wednesday. “We have already been in Chipaco for two years with a programme that supports around 200 vulnerable children on a daily basis with food, personal hygiene, school support and promotion of cultural and sports activities,” David Fernandes, director of the NGO, told Lusa.

Over time, the amount required to drill a borehole was collected and it is now operational. “The population used the water available in ponds, without hygiene and safety conditions”, he described.

There are no official statistics, but according to the community leader 183 families live in Chipaco (Vanduzi district, Manica province). Taking into account that each family will have on average five people, it is estimated that between 900 and a thousand people may benefit from water collection.

The Big Hand now intends to create a new school there to avoid children having to walk eight kilometres to another village – a distance that leads to school dropout.

The Portuguese NGO was founded in 2010 and, according to its own data, supports 5,000 children in several villages in the province of Manica. “It is true that the global crisis makes fundraising difficult, but people still have an enormous heart and a giant will to change the world and so they keep on contributing,” said David Fernandes. There are fundraising campaigns underway, such as “a pencil for a school”, in which each pencil is worth the contribution of one euro, and other initiatives described on the organisation’s website.