Good Taste profits help provide Nigerian orphanage with clean water

We were delighted to receive this report from TASTE which explains how our profits have been used to provide clean water and kitchen facilities at The City of Refuge Orphanage in Nigeria.

The Orphanage set up as a result of the inflow of children displaced from the Northeast. The Northeast is a ministry ground and a mission centre for Youth With a Mission (YWAM). YWAM do not usually provide orphanages, but due to the pressing need, it decided to make an exception with the setting up of The City of Refuge Orphanage. The Orphanage is currently home to 100 children and 30 adults who are provided with shelter, food, medical care, education and vocational training.

The City of Refuge Orphanage had an urgent need for clean drinking water due to the increasing numbers of Internally Displaced Children (IDCs) arriving in Jos, Plateau State. The only available source of water, a well, was inadequate to meet the needs of these IDCs and also was by its nature inherently unsafe source for drinking water. Many people who had drunk from the well had suffered from various illnesses, such as typhoid, due to the contaminated water from the well. The medical bill for treating these diseases was becoming a severe drain on the finances of the home.,

The Orphanage has now been provided with a solar powered borehole with 5,000 and 3,000 litre capacity tanks. The 5,000 litre tank supplies water to the main Orphanage and the neighbouring houses. The 3,000 litre capacity tank was installed near the newly built Kitchen to provide water mainly for the kitchen although it is still easily accessible for use by the rest of the Orphanage. The Orphanage now has available to it 8,000 litres of clean, potable water on a daily basis.

Although the original request from YWAM was for a borehole; enough funding became available for TASTE to provide a borehole and 4 latrines – the minimum we seek to deliver with each of our projects. However, the home already had good latrines and so we agreed to use the money, which would have been used for latrines, to provide a kitchen and store instead. The Kitchen and store provide a hygienic environment for cooking food for the residents and is built with smokeless stove technology with a chimney that extracts all smoke and fumes from the kitchen to the outside. This will keep the women cooking the meals healthy and reduce illness due to smoke inhalation. The provision of the kitchen also makes access to food easier for the children so they can eat breakfast, lunch and dinner in close proximity to their classrooms.

The newly constructed borehole, kitchen and store were dedicated on Tuesday 18th June 2019. Rev. Adamu Maga one of TASTE Nigeria Trustees dedicated the borehole and the kitchen/store. Jonathan Makan (TASTE Programme Officer) and Joy Michael Kurams of City of Refuge officially opened the borehole and the Kitchen/store respectively. TASTE Nigeria Country Director Mr. Yakubu Nuhu Chayi formally handed over the project to Mr. Michael Kurams the YWAM Director.

We are thankful to God for our supporters Goodtaste the Sheffield Fair trade Shop, Sheffield which gave £7,000 and our West Midlands supporters who raised £1,370 for the project which cost £8,300

Report written by:

Yakubu Nuhu Chayi

TASTE-Ngieria Country Director