Introducing Lohenne, Andando’s Newest Partner Community

Our Andando team, including founders Kevin and Fiona, visited Lohenne for the first time this past January to meet with community members and discuss how we might work together.

We are thrilled to welcome Lohenne, a small village of 630 residents in Senegal’s central Kaolack region, as Andando’s newest partner community.

The community came to us late last year seeking help to establish a garden that would create new opportunities for women to earn income and address malnutrition.

Whenever we visit a community, we take time to understand the full context of its situation, not only its challenges, but also its strengths. Through these conversations, we learned that although Lohenne is connected to the municipal water system, residents still lack easy access to potable drinking water. Mariame Diop explains:

“Lohenne is a village where quality water is scarce, or to get it you need to go to the village well which is not only far, but you must spend a long time filling your container which requires a lot of effort. The village is connected to the municipal water tower… but the water is not drinkable because it’s salty. It’s intended just to serve animals and for cooking, it is not even usable for laundry.”

While the municipal water is salty, the village’s local well appeared to contain abundant clean water. However, its distance from homes placed a difficult burden on the women and girls responsible for collecting water.

Our partners at FlexNRJ quickly deployed their team to test the well. Even after several hours of continuous pumping, the well maintained a strong, stable flow.

We initially examined the well as a potential water source for the requested garden. But if the village was also struggling to access drinking water, could we solve both problems at once?

To answer that question, we tested the well’s capacity and discovered that it was one of the most productive wells we have ever tested. This presented a tremendous opportunity.

Together with the village, we decided to install an upgraded solar pump and reservoir system with more than twice the capacity of a typical garden system. This would allow us not only to support the future garden, but also to provide clean drinking water for the entire village.

Local masons lay the foundation for Lohenne’s elevated water reservoir and solar panels.

This high yield system will provide village-wide access to clean drinking water.

Today, the system is fully operational and already making daily life much easier for the people of Lohenne. Fatou Kiné Ndieng describes the difference:

“Today with the installation of public taps by Andando the distance is reduced, the water from the well which is drinkable has become closer to us. In addition to the public tap, we connected a water supply in our house to the pipe installed by Andando. The water has become even closer to us, now we don't need to go out at home to get drinking water. I don't need to wake up very early to get water, I sleep as I want and when I wake up I take my container and I quietly turn on my tap to draw. Andando blessed us.”

Women gathered to celebrate the opening of Lohenne’s new public tap, which now provides clean drinking water while families work to connect their homes to the system.

Every human being deserves access to clean drinking water, and we are proud to take this first step in our partnership with the people of Lohenne. The women’s garden now underway will build on that foundation, giving women greater freedom to provide for their families on their own terms. The garden is scheduled to open this fall, and we look forward to sharing Lohenne’s continued journey toward a more prosperous future.

Wouro Kellé: Unlocking Abundance

Having water close at hand is a rarity in the Sahel, and in this way, Wouro Kellé is blessed. This village of more than 700 people sits on the banks of the Senegal River, in the fertile floodplain where irrigated rice production is possible, along with a wide range of other agricultural opportunities.

Women from the village wore traditional Pulaar attire to greet us during discussions about a new water system.

Andando first partnered with this community through a women’s garden, which has become phenomenally successful. But despite the abundance around them, the village still lacks something even more critical: safe drinking water.

Water in the garden comes directly from the Senegal River. This is fine for growing vegetables, but it is far from potable.

Families from Wouro Kelle rely upon the river for their drinking water.

Few families have the money to purchase bottled water, and when the floods cut off access, even that costly option disappears, leaving the people here no choice but to drink directly from the river.

Wouro Kellé’s former water filtration system, which proved to be inadequate and unable to be maintained in such a rural setting.

An earlier effort tried to solve this issue with a sophisticated filtration system, but its output was limited from the start, and it ultimately couldn’t be maintained. This past fall, the village was left once again in an all-too-familiar situation, as Oumou Aw explains:

Oumou Aw explained the impacts of unsafe water on her community while showing us her plot in the women’s cooperative garden.

“Since the time of our ancestors up to now we are drinking from the river. When we drink the water, it gives us diarrhea. At the beginning of every rainy season, we suffer from diarrhea. This affects every household, and after the rainy season, the water is full of germs and bacteria.”

— Oumou Aw, member of the Wouro Kelle Women's Cooperative Garden

With the need so urgent, we were thrilled to find a new partner in Seaboard Overseas and Trading Group, who stepped forward to help us pursue a lasting solution for Wouro Kellé.

Andando recently brought in technicians from the regional capital to conduct a groundwater survey ahead of drilling a new well.

Together, this month, we will break ground on a new borehole well and solar pump system, bringing clean water to all 700 residents, as well as the village’s school and health clinic. We can’t wait to share the possibilities that arise for such a resilient and ambitious community.

Hope on the Edge of the Sahara

Some of the residents of Senobowal Village.

Senobowal sits at the crossroads of a changing world. Home to more than 2,000 Indigenous Pulaar pastoralists, it has been a center of life and movement in northern Senegal for generations. But the rhythms of this beautiful and demanding landscape are shifting. Rains are less predictable, pasture is under growing pressure, and poverty is rising alongside extreme heat. Even so, the people of Senobowal remain vital stewards of a fragile landscape on the edge of the Sahara. Their way of life is under threat, but their knowledge and resilience are also part of the answer to a warming world.

Andando first partnered with Senobowal in 2023 through the construction of a health clinic, bringing lifesaving care closer to families who had long faced dangerous delays in reaching treatment. The impact was immediate, particularly for mothers and their babies, but healthcare is only possible with access to water.

Just when things were starting to improve, the water shut off for nearly a year. Ousemane Fall, President of the Youth of Senobowal, explained the problem in a letter to Andando:

“For a very long time, the village had only one well, which is said to be almost a century old and 200ft deep and which was practically out of use. As a temporary solution, the beginning of a new hope, the village had benefited from a “mini borehole” with a 50,000L tank. But even this showed its limits very early on.”

— Ousemane Fall, President of the Youth of Senobowal

Families used water carts, like this one, to travel far distances to access water.

Ousemane went on to describe how the village had spent thousands of dollars to keep a costly diesel-powered pump running, until it could no longer be repaired, leaving the village without water.

Senobowal was in urgent need

We came together with the village to talk through the problem and understand what it would really take to fix it once and for all. But we also asked a larger question: if accessing water was no longer a daily struggle, what might be possible here? What hopes did people still carry for their future?

The answer soon became clear. The people here have countless dreams for how to improve their lives and build a better future, but no matter their ambition, the shallow, undersized borehole simply could never meet the needs of the over 5,000 people and 30,000 livestock who depended on it.

This time, the goal was to do it right

Andando committed to drilling a new, deeper borehole equipped with a powerful solar pump to meet the full needs of Senobowal and the surrounding zone. In less than a year, the new system was in place. Water began flowing again, and life started to change for the better from day one.

“The way we were moving our livestock to the southern areas was due to the water problem. Now with the availability of water, they take their time to settle. Whenever there is grass, they don’t move.” - Ousemane Fall

Today, women and girls no longer have to spend five or six hours each day just collecting water. Children can attend school, and the health clinic can once again deliver lifesaving care. For the first time in decades, Senobowal is breathing a sigh of relief. Families are even beginning to install taps in their homes, something that would have been almost unthinkable just a short time ago. Hawa Sy’s testimony shows just how profound and hopeful this change has been.

This article is from Andando’s Annual Report, view it here.

Answering the call of the Diéri: Andando’s newest frontier

Community leaders in Kawé , located in the Diére, meet with Andando staff to discuss the future of their primary school.

Andando has always grown by listening. For years, our work in northern Senegal thrived in the Walo, the floodplains along the Senegal River. But after every success there, local leaders would pull us aside with the same request: “This is wonderful, but can you take it to the Diéri? Almost no one is helping there.”

Without local access to clean water, families in the Diéri are often forced into multi-day journeys just to meet their basic needs.

Families in the Diéri are often forced into multi-day journeys just to meet their basic needs. Here, one family uses a donkey-pulled water cart to fill up with water in Senobowal and make the long journey home.

The Diéri is the vast, arid pastoral zone south of the river, home to indigenous Peulh herders who have raised livestock in balance with this land for centuries. Today, that balance is fracturing. When rain fails or a water point breaks, families are forced into crisis migrations. Children are pulled from school, and access to medical care for pregnant women, children, and treatable illnesses becomes all but impossible as families move farther away. 

With a new borehole well, the existing water tower can meet the needs of Senobowal and the surrounding 10 villages that rely it for their basic needs.

We saw this reality firsthand in Senobowal where we were initially called to build only a health clinic.  The community quickly revealed other urgent needs though, leading to our most comprehensive "whole village" intervention to date. 

In the coming months, we’ll be sharing more about how the clinic, solar borehole well, women’s garden, woodlot, and school support are transforming life there for the better.

A lifeline for the region: Senobowal’s solar borehole serves 5,000 people and 30,000 livestock across 10 villages.

Now, other Diéri communities are asking for that same chance. The scale of the need and the difficulty of this work is immense, but so too is the potential. These families are the frontline stewards of this region, quite literally holding back the advance of the Sahara.

In the vast Diéri, schools are few and far between. In Kawé, we are prioritizing classroom renovations and proper sanitation to keep students in school year-round.

The women of Peté Olé are ready to start a cooperative garden to feed their families, they are simply waiting for a reliable water source.

For this landscape to survive, its people must be able to thrive. By building these systems of stability, we are ensuring that the stewards of the Diéri can stay to protect it for generations to come. To the best of our ability, Andando is answering that call, one village at a time.