Iresa Boru water scheme

Mohamed Jaldesa, you are one of the winners of the Institut Cerba's internal call for projects, which aims to support employees’ associative commitments. Can you tell us about your project?

I am one of the founders of the ‘Iresa Boru Water scheme’, which was set up in 2021. As the name suggests, its objective is to provide clean and safe drinking water to the inhabitants of Iresa Boru, a village with 400 households, i.e., about 3,200 inhabitants, located near the border with Somalia and which is regularly affected by major droughts. 

Our project has three objectives in particular: to repair the existing Iresa Boru borehole and to construct a new one; to restore the currently non-functional piping system; and to rehabilitate a disused water tank for water storage and distribution. 

Why did you get involved in this particular cause?  

I live in Iresa Boru and access to water is one of the biggest problems our community faces, my own family included. Residents (especially women and children) have to walk every single day to fetch water, sometimes up to 20 km, leaving before dawn and returning around midday, exhausted.

As a first-hand witness to the disastrous consequences that this lack of water is having on the community, I could not stand by and do nothing. My first action was to build a water tank in a nearby mosque. I then set up a broader Iresa Boru Water scheme that will be supported by the Institut Cerba, and which now counts on 15 committed volunteers.  
 

How did you react when you heard that you were one of the winners of the call for projects?  

When I saw the word "Congratulations" in the introduction of the email informing us of the results of the call for projects, I couldn't believe it! We had filled out so many funding applications that went unanswered... Receiving a positive response gives us hope and motivates us to continue with our efforts still further.  

We will therefore continue with our fundraising and hope that other good news will follow. As Iresa Boru is one of the most remote places in Kenya, the overall budget for our project is close to 20 million Kenyan shillings (160,000 euros approximately), a substantial amount of money that we are trying to raise through a range of different channels. 

Would you like to share a final word with us?   

From the bottom of my heart and on behalf of all the members of Iresa Boru water scheme, I would like to thank the Institut Cerba for selecting our project. It is a new beginning for the inhabitants of Iresa Boru, who are desperately trying to find a solution to the problem of water supply in their area.