Project final recipients. The final beneficiaries are small-holder farmers and rural families across the Sidama Region and Gofa and Gamo zones (SNNP Region) who will gain access to water, improved food security and better income. All ages of society will benefit from the intervention. The water well and other subsurface water extraction will require considerable labor, staffing, and specific technical skill. This will enable job creation for the young and vocationally trained men and women, and it will also prevent internal displacement. Since there would be enough water for domestic use, the burden of carrying water from far-off locations, which mostly exposes women to adverse conditions, will be greatly alleviated. The intervention will also help to carry out subsidiary activities (e.g. irrigation for agriculture, drinking water supply, groundwater resources protection and sanitation) required to keep the water supply system running, bringing additional income for inhabitants. The awareness created in terms of self- help by local enterprises based on the technique and information gathered from the intervention project will initiate a way out of ordinary practices and look for new frontiers in the various problems encountered in the community’s livelihood. Also, it will alleviate the risk of adverse health conditions due to the unclean open water source normally used for domestic purposes. It also entails to the local community the practice of leading their enterprise by plans and introduces the importance of quantitative evaluation of resources in terms of expenditures and savings. The most important benefit will be detangling from the traditional farming practice of years of relying on unpredictable and ever-worsening climatic conditions in rain- fed agriculture. Multiple harvesting cycles will also benefit from sustainable subsurface water resource utilization by avoiding the idle times spent between the rain seasons.
