The Water Connects Us Project

The Water Connects Us Project is a new project for the Enactus eCampus team, building on NSCC's longstanding partnership with the Vocational Education and Training Authority (VETA), Tanzanian Community Based Organizations (CBOs), and previous work completed through the Happiness Project.

The project will equip mixed teams of Canadian and Tanzanian youth with green-entrepreneurship skills, renewable-energy innovation, and circular-economy thinking.

The primary goal of the project is establishing water centres powered by NanoFilter and run by female Tanzanian entrepreneurs, to provide reliable clean water access, and reduce the amount of time women and girls spend collecting water.

Key focuses of this project include:

Renewable energy integration and innovation
Green-entrepreneurship and circular-economy thinking
Linking water insecurity with gender inequality, climate vulnerability, and SDG priorities

Clean water centres use an affordable fee-for-service safe water model, with local ownership revenues covering consumables, maitenance, and stipends. Renewable-energy integration reduces costs and increases reliability, with school-adjacent placements creating steady demand, supporting community health and education.

The model emphasizes partner co-investment, student innovation, and a path to community owned, financially viable operations. With the NanoFilter partnership (Gongali Model), technicians can customize filters to individual community needs prior to water centre establishment.

While this project is still in the early stages of development:

Project partners have been secured
Sites have been identified
Student teams have been prepared
Intercultural learning modules have been completed
Renewable-energy-supported NanoFilter installation and community engagement is underway

Unfortunately, the project has faced roadblocks with the NSCC-based team unable to travel to Tanzania due to civil unrest that began in Fall 2025, and subsequent travel advisories issued by the Government of Canada. The NSCC team has maintained contact and collaboration with Tanzanian-based teams, and plans to reschedule travel when it is safe to do so.

2025-26 Impact Statistics

4

Tanzanian women establishing fully-operational water stations, improving community access to safe water.

800

Indirectly impacted in surrounding communities to water stations. With water stations in school-adjacent locations, this increases school attendance and reduces the spread of water-borne illnesses.

$9,257

Revenue generated from water stations, increasing female entrepreneurs daily wage from $1-2 CAD to $14 CAD per day.

2025-2026 Project Impact

Since the start of 2025, our team, in partnership with NanoFilter, local Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), and partner colleges financed 3 women-led water centres powered by Nano-Filter water filteration systems in the Mto wa Mbu and Kilwa Misko regions of Tanzania.

These systems provide up to 1200 litres of clean water daily and generate $42 CAD per day for the female entrepreneurs who operate the centres.

Each women recieves business and health training support from Gongali Model Co. Ltd, a Tanzania social enterprise commited to providing clean and affortable water across Africa.

We are funding a third and fourth water center to expand access to water, entrepreneurship, and environmental benefits by the end of 2026, with support from two Enactus Project Accelorators:

The Ralph M. Barford Equal Access Project Accelerator
The Capital Power Powering Change by Changing Power Project Accelerator

In addition to the water centres, a local initiative was led by Olivia, a local high-school student working on the teams behalf in Spring 2025. Her project, "The Happiness Run for Clean Water and Gender Equality" saw her run or walk 6km every day for one month, representing the distance women and girls often travel to collect water.

This initiative was to raise awareness about gender equality, the importance of clean water and sanitation, and the environmental harm caused by single-use plastic. Through a province-wide bottle drive, this campaign:

Encouraged Nova Scotians to reduce their consumption of single-use plastics
Demonstrated how local circular-economy action can refuel global empowerment
Connected Canadian environmental stewardship with women's entrepreneruship abroad