The COVID pandemic has shown that neighbours are not just those living beside us. We cannot disconnect ourselves from the plight of women and girls who can't socially distance as they draw water from crowded pumps; and we cannot ignore children who can’t frequently wash their hands because water takes so much time to fetch.

Lifewater Canada’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak began in early March, 2020. The Lifewater Kenya Ltd. took a position of leadership starting work early to prevent the spread of COVID-19 when there were just a few known cases in the country.

Lifewater's team held numerous community workshops per week, making people aware of the problem and teaching them how to protect themselves in a sustainable way. Small participatory workshops were held with people practicing the 6-foot separation rule. Participants were taught how to:

• Effectively wash their hands;
• Simply disinfection of pump handles and buckets;
• Change in traditional practices so that two-metre distances are maintained while waiting in line at pumps, while still allowing for rejuvenating conversation and culturally important exchange of news;
• Monitoring the health of family and neighbours so that people with possible COVID symptoms can be quickly isolated from close contact with others.

Workshops were held at Church's, clinics, schools, orphanges and high-use water points.

In April, Canadian nurses provided patterns for surgical masks. Lifewater's Kenyan staff began making masks and then hired local tailors and seamstresses to sew more masks for the team to distribute.

The battle is far from over. Kenya's first case of COVID-19 was not detected until mid-March. In April, the number of new COVID cases in Kenya remained stable at less than 20 per day. However, in May the number of cases began to spike and by mid-month was regularly exceeding 60 new cases per day. This represents the general situation in Africa - COVID hitting much later than in Canada but, with crowding, poor sanitation and hygiene, and lack of medical capacity, could be much more deadly and long-lasting.

With your help and support, people now have the capacity to understand COVID and have clear actions that will help prevent it from devastating their country. Thank-you!