Most of us, I guess, don't immediately associate a hand water pump with literacy. Here are pictures of the pump we recently funded for the village of Machartit:


The line of jerry cans waiting to be filled is a standard scene at every hand pump in remote villages. There is no "rush hour" when it comes to collecting water for the family. These pumps are operating continually from sunrise to sunset to provide water for drinking, cooking, and bathing in villages such as Wunlang and Machartit with hundreds of families in need of water every day.

Now for the literacy angle. "Functional literacy" is defined as reading and writing skills required to perform a job or to improve job performance. Water hand pump maintenance is an important job - vital, you might say. With so much use day in and day out, these hand pumps take a beating. They frequently break. A trained team of workers is needed to keep the pumps operational.

We recently applied for a grant to fund our functional literacy program in southern Sudan, and water hand pump maintenance is one of the vocations we hope to improve with a trained workforce. The newly literate trainees who graduate from our literacy program should be more effective in educating communities in water pump maintenance and in making the frequent repairs needed for a water pump with such constant use as Machartit's. The workers will be able find jobs with bore hole drilling companies or as independent entrepreneurs delivering this vital service to communities in the region.