Clean Water, Bright Futures: Investing in Rwanda’s Youngest Learners

Our team recently had the chance to spend time in rural Rwanda, visiting early childhood development centers (ECDs) that are now using Spouts’ Viva Purifaaya ceramic filters. It was one of those trips that makes the “why” behind our work feel very tangible and real.

ECDs in Rwanda serve children roughly between 1–6 years old and come in different forms: community-based centers, home-based programs and private ECDs, often attached to primary schools. They are places where children spend several hours a day learning, playing and eating together. The government has invested heavily in expanding access to ECDs over the past decade because the early years are so critical for brain development and long-term human capital.

A less visible, but essential, part of that effort is safe drinking water. Rwandan regulations require ECDs to provide treated water to children. This is not a box-ticking exercise; chronic exposure to unsafe water and diarrhoea in early childhood is linked to stunting and impaired cognitive development. Lancet and WHO have both highlighted that repeated enteric infections in the first years of life can reduce brain volume and lower school readiness. Put simply, if children do not have safe water in the first 1,000 days and beyond, they cannot fully develop the physical and cognitive foundations they need to thrive as adults later in life. And if that happens at scale, a country cannot fully realize its demographic dividend.

Today, many ECDs in Rwanda still rely on boiling water with firewood or charcoal to treat water. These options are expensive, labour-intensive, and contribute to deforestation and carbon emissions. Some centers use chlorine which often changes the taste and smell of water, leading to low acceptance among children, parents, and staff.

Spouts offers a different path. Under a national mandate, Spouts is distributing Viva Purifaaya ceramic water filters to ECDs in rural communities across Rwanda. These gravity-fed filters remove bacteria and other contaminants without electricity, firewood, or chemicals, and they significantly reduce water treatment costs over time, while preserving the environment.

To date, close to 90,000 ECDs across Rwanda are benefiting from Spouts filters. Watching a three-year-old confidently fill her cup from a tap attached to a ceramic filter – instead of a jerrycan of untreated water in the corner – is a small moment that represents a big systems shift: from reactive health spending to preventive, brain-building investment. Safe water is not just a health intervention; it is a foundational investment in Rwanda’s future productivity and leadership.