“Climate change, water and Coronavirus are critically interrelated. In light of the accelerating climate crisis, who knows if this is the last pandemic? In much of Africa people can’t even access water within their own homes”.
—Christelle Kwizera, 2019 WE Empower UN SDG Challenge awardee and water engineer, Africa region
While Covid-19 has wrought havoc globally, the developing world is much less equipped to cope. The poorest, especially women, are the hardest hit. Water engineer Christelle Kwizera is determined to focus on helping these disadvantaged groups. As CEO of Water Access Rwanda and the WE Empower UN SDG Challenge awardee for the Africa region, Kwizera has been using the grant prize money she won through the WE Empower Challenge to help support local schools and households in need by connecting them to water.
In many households in Rwanda there is no access to running water inside the home so women and children must fetch or stand in line at public outlets. Some 200 million hours are wasted by women across Africa in fetching water. Kwizera describes the additional challenges COVID-19 is creating and the solutions she is implementing in this new podcast series “Voices of Resilience” with our lead partner Vital Voices.