The Millennium Challenge Account – Jordan (MCA-Jordan), managing the U.S. Government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation’s grant to execute water and sewage projects in the Zarqa Governorate, launched the awareness campaign "By Water We Live – We Preserve it to Survive" to motivate the society there to adopt best practices in managing water inside the homes, in a meeting organized by the MCA in Zarqa city yesterday.
The campaign, which will continue until October 2016, is characterized by its comprehensive channels and activities. It will entail home visits for over five thousand National Aid Fund beneficiary families in the Zarqa Governorate to maintain their home water networks, raising awareness among women and homemakers on methods of maintaining the quality and quantity of water available to them, training them on discovering water network malfunctions in their homes and methods of addressing such problems, and continuously checking the general conditions of the water tanks and protecting them from external pollutants. These families were identified following a field survey undertaken by Co-water International Inc,the project's consultant, last year. The campaign will also coordinate with the Ministry of Education to organize awareness visits to reach elementary students in 225 schools in Zarqa and Ruseifeh this year and the following year, during which a short awareness film will be screened on water quantity and quality and awareness material will be distributed.
The activities of the campaign will also include awareness sessions for women in cooperation with twelve local women's NGOs in Zarqa and Ruseifeh, totaling 60 sessions throughout the campaign, and 20 awareness sessions for men, to be held in some tribal headquarters in the two cities, in addition to circulating water awareness messages through preaching lessons in cooperation with the Ministry of Islamic Affairs.
The CEO of MCA-Jordan,Engineer Kamal Al Zoubi, commented, "The importance of this campaign arises from its role in raising awareness on maintaining water quantity and quality in the homes and enhancing positive behaviors in this regard. This campaign comes at a time where we are constructing and restructuring the water network project in Zarqa and Ruseifa to improve water access to citizens in the highly populated Governorate by reducing network water loss from 59% to 35% in 2016,alongside increasing individual water shares from 62 liters per individual per day to 89.”
Engineer Zoubi said that there is a need for adopting sound behaviors in managing and using water efficiently within the homes, including internal water pipe maintenance and checking the soundness of tanks, their buoys and their tight closure, along with other behaviors.
The campaign's activities also include billboards with awareness messages in some main streets of Zarqa Governorate and the monthly distribution of brochures directly to the home surging residents to maintain water quantity and quality and to check the soundness of the pipe and tank network.
MCA-Jordan seeks to cooperate with private sector companies and institutions to support the campaign's activities through broadcasting commercials on popular local television channels as well as through radio station commercials and other activities.