In early February, Thibault Lamarque, founder of CASTALIE, traveled to Ethiopia to visit a dozen projects funded by the Made Blue Foundation. Since December 2019, CASTALIE working with the Dutch foundation to support projects that facilitate access to drinking water in Ethiopia, thanks to its collaboration with the African NGO AMREF.
In Ethiopia, more than 35% of the population does not have access to safe drinking water.
Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous country, has been experiencing exponential growth for more than a decade, reaching over 9% in 2019. However, it remains one of the poorest countries in the world, and access to drinking water is very limited: more than 35% of Ethiopians do not have access to drinking water, and 85% do not have access to improved sanitation facilities. And it is precisely on this issue that the Made Blue Foundation Made Blue decided to take action!
It has partnered with AMREF, an African NGO run by Africans, for the "drinking water: access for all" project . Their mission? Primarily technical (creating access to drinking water), it is also educational, improving hygiene and sanitation awareness among local populations.
CASTALIE to Ethiopia by supporting micro-projects with a big impact.
In December 2019, on World Human Rights Day, CASTALIE 7,500,000 liters of drinking water in Ethiopia. During his trip to Ethiopia, Thibault Lamarque visited a dozen micro-entrepreneurial projects: centers providing access to drinking water (showers, toilets, water points), including a school in Adama that was recently equipped with this infrastructure.
This latest initiative has had multiple impacts: "notably to significantly increase student enrollment, to convey messages to parents about hygiene and the prevention of female genital mutilation, which is still practiced in Ethiopia...It's a virtuous project that particularly touched me," says Thibault, who has set himself the goal of financing the construction of infrastructure in the city's 39 other schools in 2020.
Because access to drinking water is a human right and more than 2 billion people are unable to benefit from it, supporting and financing virtuous projects such as those of Made Blue is a matter of course for CASTALIE.
Text: Jeanne Favas Photo credits: Carolien Gadella-van Wersch and Anne Harteman
