Start Date: 2011-08-22

Completion Date: 2011-09-01

Technology Used:

At 3600mm of precipitation per year, Sierra Leone has an excellent rainfall resource. The Barina Agricultural Secondary School consists of three main buildings, each with a metal roof, offering a total collection area of 966 square meters. Plenty of water can be collected during the wet months (May - October), but tankage calculations must supply sufficient storage to cover usage during the driest period, January and February.
All of the materials required to build the system are available in Sierra Leone. Food-grade polyethylene tanks, PVC pipe to be cut in half for gutters, taps and screening to exclude insects and debris. All required materials can be trnsprted from Freetown with a small truck.

Phases:

The project will be completed in one phase with Bank On Rain personnel on-site for a 10 day period to train, advise, demonstrate and participate in the construction.

Community Organization:

The planning for this project has been initiated with the cooperation and involvement of the school Headmaster, J.C. Tarawali and the assistance of the staff, principally Eric Silverman, a Peace Corps Volunteer teacher. Once installed, the system will be maintained by the students under the direction of the school staff. Smaller systems appropriate to a household will be installed on some of the smaller school buildings to demonstrate to students and future classes a system that could be installed in their homes, thus continuing the educational aspects of the project.

Government Interaction:

This project is not connected to any Government programs as the school is run by a Catholic charity, but if approved, a written plan explaining the project, who is implementing it and why it is important to the school and community will be supmitted to the Deputy Director of Education for the Tonkolili District, the Kunike Barina paramount chief and the local councilor.

Ancillary activities:

There is interest in using rainwater collection in conjunction with the school garden, but that is beyond the scope of the proposed plan. We hope that exposure to and participation in the design and construction of a rainwater collection system will encourage students to build appropriately scaled systems for their own homes or encourage such installations in their villages.

Other Issues:

During rebel army occupation in the 1990's all of the books in the school library were burned and funding has not been available to replace them. The school staff have requested that any books that could be donated would be very well received. We intend to ship an assortment of hand tools for use in the rainfall harvest system installation to be left with the school. These tools will be shipped in two recycled "fish totes", food-grade polyethylene containers, each of 950 liter capacity that will be used for the smaller scaled demonstration installation. The hand tools will only occupy a small amount of the space in the totes and we intend to fill the remainder of the space with donated books and others that we can purchase to donate to the library.