Report of Lifewater’s Bensa Program Shows Significant Results

The results are in! 2021 data from Lifewater’s first Vision of a Healthy Village program cycle in Bensa, Ethiopia shows that safe water and health practices are saving lives.

In 2016, our teams began a multi-year program in Bensa, Ethiopia. The main goal was to end the water crisis in that area, working house by house and utilizing Lifewater’s proven “Vision of a Healthy Village” (VHV) process. Between October 2016 and March 2021, the Vision of a Healthy Village approach was carried out in two programs encompassing five rural kebeles, serving 48,173 with safe water, sanitation, and hygiene.

VHV seeks to put an end to the water and sanitation crisis by taking a grassroots, data-driven approach developed from lessons learned over 35+ years of experience, best practices in community development, and the collective wisdom of our program leaders in the field. It is a holistic, Christ-centered approach to bringing water to the thirsty.

We are now at the end of the first VHV program in Bensa, and we have completed a statistically-significant endline survey to measure the impact of Lifewater programs. The results are incredible!

The biggest news is this—90% fewer children under the age of five years old are suffering from diarrheal disease.

In our baseline survey, 22 percent of households in Bensa had at least one child under five with diarrhea in the week prior. At the endline survey, that number had reduced to 2 percent, a 90 percent decrease in the prevalence of childhood diarrheal disease.

Praise God! Many young lives are saved.

Diarrheal disease is the second largest cause of death for children under the age of five, and it’s caused primarily by contaminated water and poor sanitation.  In Lifewater programs, children are healthy.

Thank you for being a part of lasting change for children and families in Bensa, Ethiopia!

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT HERE >