DESIGN OF A RAINWATER CAPTURE AND SUPPLY SYSTEM

Women for Women International (WfWI), a global NGO, believes that the rebuilding of a country that has suffered through genocide can best be achieved by educating and empowering women at a grass roots level.

In pursuit of WfWI’s mission, a Women’s Opportunity Center located in Kayonza, Rwanda was designed to integrate the client’s programmatic goals with the unique challenge of building a center to train 300 women annually in rural Rwanda.

In an area where most people collect water in jerry cans at the bottom of valleys, we designed a rain water capture and supply system that supplies water to the site throughout the year (includes two dry seasons) with little back-up. Animal waste is collected in a bio-gas system so that firewood can be replaced with cooking fuel. Composting toilets with separate urine collection systems were designed to supply much needed nutrients for adjacent farms that are limited by both nitrogen and phosphorus depleted soils. A drinking water filter using both a sand filter and UV were designed for the site. Grey water is also separated and applied directly to kitchen gardens. A significant effort was made to only use technologies that already existed in the country and where local professions could be relied upon for monitoring and maintenance needs.