Middle East and North Africa - Jordan
Water Smart Homes Activities was a three-year project funded by the Millennium Challenge Account Jordan. Working with the poor in Zarqa, a city east of Amman, the overall objective of the project was to improve the condition of home water systems and to decrease the costs that households incur to satisfy their water needs. The project reached this goal through two components – the administration of the infrastructure works and an outreach campaign that reached 400,000 residents. The outreach campaign educated the general public in Zarqa and encouraged behavioural changes in the area of water savings and water efficient practices within the households. Cowater’s role on the infrastructure work component included the design of work, supervision and oversight of the implementation of USD 4M worth of works in 4,000 poor households by contractors. As part of the outreach campaign, Cowater piloted a women plumbers program whereby 30 women from the project area were provided with a comprehensive vocational, marketing, business, and entrepreneurship training program after which they were supplied with plumbing toolkits and marketing materials that they used to carry on with their small businesses.
