In Sierra Leone, the Augustinian Recollects have already built dozens of wells. Since 2020, in addition to ensuring drinking water in villages, another aspect has been added: the construction of up to ten wells in schools.
For a long time, the Augustinian Recollects in Sierra Leone have strived to bring drinking water to rural villages, ensuring families access to clean water for their daily lives throughout the year.
Dozens of wells were built at the African Recollect mission, with numerous co-financiers, whose international cooperation grants were submitted by the Recollect NGOs: La Esperanza, Haren Alde, and, currently joining this effort, ARCORES.
However, since 2020, there has been a new “turn of the screw”: seven wells have already been built in schools, and three more are currently underway. For this World Water Day, it is a testament to how easy access to water changes and improves education.
In 2020, the well was built at the Saint Thomas School in Kamabai, with funding from ARCORES Spain and the Mancomunidad Aguas de Montejurra (Navarra, Spain), a supra-municipal public entity that has collaborated with the Augustinian Recollects in Sierra Leone for at least two decades.
In 2024, a giant step was taken with the construction of six wells in rural primary schools (students aged 6 to 12) in Bamoi, Rochain, Karene, Bumban, Kakorla, and Kakendema, rural localities of the Recollect missions of Kamabai and Kamalo. The co-financiers were the Tudela City Council, the Roviralta Foundation, and the Mutua Madrileña Foundation.
These are not small school communities; for example, in Bumban there are 306 students and 7 teachers; Kakorla, 210 students and 4 teachers; Kakendema, 210 students and 6 teachers.
Construction of three wells is currently underway next to the primary schools of Bumbankakendeka, Kathantha, and Kabakeh, all within the Kamabai mission in Bombali district, co-financed by Ferrovial.
Sierra Leone’s schools are a hive of activity for children who eagerly attend their overcrowded classrooms, with many students and few teachers. Each day, they arrive not only from their locality but also from many other small surrounding villages. Some of these children walk five to ten kilometers daily just to get to school.
Sierra Leone’s schools are also a hotbed of heat. The tropical climate adds to the fact that schools often have corrugated zinc roofs that absorb heat and transmit it downwards. The classrooms are barely larger than 50 square meters, and each one is crowded with more than 50 students.
There is also no school transportation, and most travel is on foot. Whether or not drinking water is readily available at the school is a decisive factor for consumption, hygiene, and mitigating the effects of climate change by cooling the environment—in other words, for education itself.
A protective perimeter wall is added to the wells and they are surrounded by fruit trees, avocados, cashews, and mangoes, which help maintain groundwater levels, protect against erosion, recharge the water table, and supplement the diet of the school community.
Training is also provided in each school and in the local community on personal hygiene, food hygiene, proper water use, and preventive health. Training is also provided on well maintenance, for which the necessary tools are provided: clamps, wrenches, additional pipes and connecting rods, connectors, cylinders, nozzles, and so on.
