Kemira supports children’s rights to water, health and safe growth with Plan through projects in Bolivia, Ethiopia and China. One of the projects is a school and community project in Zhang Cheng village in China, which aims to improve availability of potable water and sanitation in the local primary and middle schools.
 
Approximately 50 million people in China’s rural areas have limited access to safe drinking water. “Unlike other units, we have hundreds of children in school. The teaching and learning work cannot be implemented, if we do not have water to drink” Xian Shengli, the Headmaster of Zhang Cheng Middle School describes the current situation. “Now, we can only dig a water cellar in school, and use a small pump to provisionally extract water by ourselves. We hope that we will not need to worry about children’s drinking water issue any more after the completion of this water supply system“, he adds.
 

Children of Zhang Cheng primary school
 
The first part of the project is constructing water systems to the communities. The project plan for the water system construction has been finalized together with the county level officials and the construction of the water system started in September. It is expected that the project can be completed by the end of the year, if the high altitude and low temperature in Longde County does not affect the progress of the construction.

Workers constructing the water system
 
The project also aims to raise the health and hygiene awareness of children and villagers in general. One of the activities has been a health training that was conducted for teachers and students in Zhang Cheng Middle School and Zhang Cheng Primary School in September. The feedback on the training was positive.
 
“The sanitation and health training was conducted in a participatory way, which was very effective! Now, the children can collect more health information by themselves and share with each other”, Youhua, a teacher of Zhang Cheng Primary School comments. The students were engaged in the training and found it easier to learn about basic health knowledge, which laid a good foundation for their development of proper health habits in the future.
 
Access to safe potable water is a human right. Water is one of the most important vital conditions for life and clean water a precondition for survival. Support for projects that develop potable water supply and increase hygiene is a natural continuation to Kemira’s international work as a leading water chemistry company.
 
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