Net4things is collaborating with ADS in the Vehicle monitoring in Ethiopia
In the Muketerri region, in Oromía (Ethiopia), is the rural town of Harkiso, where the NGO ADS works with enthusiasm and effort to build a water well and supply water to all the people of this community.
A collaboration with ADS to improve the lives of girls and women
The women and girls of the rural Harkiso community travel daily in search of water for their families. In this culture, this task falls to girls and women who are forced to drop out of school. In one day, they can travel between 15 and 20 km minimum on each trip to bring water to their homes. Sometimes, they make several trips because they cannot find where to extract it from due to the drought that the country is suffering.
Once ADS identified the needs of this community, it launched a project to create a well on this land and thus supply the entire town with water.
The objective of ADS is to improve the living conditions of the population of Harkiso, by guaranteeing access to a source of drinking water managed in a sustainable and inclusive manner through the drilling of a water well and the installation of its respective manual pump. In addition, a Water Committee is created, made up of members of the beneficiary community, to guarantee the long-term sustainable self-management of the project. This committee will receive training from the Regional Water Office on the maintenance, sanitation and inclusive management of the well, taking care of the participation of women in the Committee.
To facilitate the work of the people working on this project, Net4things has donated IoT technology to monitor the vehicles they are using in the field. The NGO’s vehicles have a device that connects to the OBD port to extract data from the vehicle diagnosis and driver behavior instantly. This information is collected and analyzed in our mobility platform.
Facilitate the work of the ADS team
Thanks to this technology, ADS knows the status of the vehicles and where they are in real time. A very relevant information since the distances between some places and others is very large and there is no other means of transport than the private vehicle. And, sometimes unforeseen events arise and you have to locate the closest car to solve the problem. It also offers information on the routes made by the operators and the kilometers traveled. In addition, it detects the theft of the vehicle since it sends you a notification in the event that the vehicle is moved outside the scheduled hours.
In the words of Paco Moreno, General Director of ADS, having connected vehicles is very important in the work we do every day in Ethiopia. This technology allows us to know the exact location of where we are and where we locate the points in which we are going to carry out the drilling of water wells.
In addition, it allows us to speed up the work since we can mark this location and communicate it to our team, both in Ethiopia and in Spain, and thus know the exact point of the work carried out without going there again. And we must also point out that it is a very useful tool for us in risk situations. At any time we can know where the vehicles are and that our colleagues are always geolocated. Likewise, all this allows us to have a history of the routes that we have carried out, being able to identify those that are safe for the future mobilizations of our team.
Fran Rodriguez, CRO of Net4things highlights that putting technology at the service of this organization is a tremendous satisfaction when giving access to water to disadvantaged populations. With the information from the connected vehicles that we provide them, we hope that they will speed up their tasks and improve their work in the field. We wanted to help these people have access to water in their village so that women and girls can access school and gain greater confidence and well-being. Having water opens up possibilities for them to be in better health and dedicate themselves to their families in a culture where girls and women lack leadership and live in unfavorable situations.
The data confirms it
According to UNICEF, women and girls spend 200 million hours a day collecting water. In addition to the time spent collecting water, we must add the significant time that many of them dedicate to finding a place to go, which represents, according to UNICEF, an additional 266 million hours of time lost each day because they do not have a bathroom at home.
Within the Sustainable Development Goals, safe water and basic sanitation are essential for gender equality (SDG 6). We often overlook the fact that the lack of coverage for essential services worsens the quality of life for many women.
How can you collaborate with ADS?
Any person, organization or entity can help with a financial contribution or can also be a volunteer
Video of the vehicle monitoring project
Watch the video to learn more about the vehicle monitoring for the NGO ADS in Ethiopía and the declarations of Paco Moreno, General Director of ADS about how the Net4things tecnology helps them to locate their vehicles there.