Setting up and funding Regional WASH Resource Centres in Nepal

The Change

The Department of Water Supply and Sewerage (DWSS) under the Ministry of Physical Planning and Works (MPPW), the lead ministry for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector in Nepal has since 2011 allocated budget for Regional WASH Resource Centre (RC) in Surkhet and decided to establish Regional WASH Resource Centres in four other administrative regions of the country. Nepal is divided into five regions and 75 districts for administrative purpose.

How did the change come about?

At national level, the exchange of information is primarily taken care of by two institutions:  the Resource Centre at DWSS and the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene-Resource Centre Network Nepal (WASH-RCNN). However, since Nepal consists of diverse administrative regions with remote districts, WASH coordination and the exchange of information within and among regions and districts were rather limited till recently.  While doing a needs assessment for establishing regional resource centres in 2009, the WASH-RCNN concluded that this lack of coordination and information hampered both policy development at national level and WASH service delivery at regional and district level.

Water and Sanitation Competition; Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu

“Our lives and our livelihoods depend on this water. If we don’t have it, we don’t have anything.” These were the words of Zaphe Kani, one of the most respected members of the community. He was a teacher, and his words were followed by a startling silence that seemed to reverberate around the room. The community that had gathered in the church hall that day could sense that the problem was now beyond their control and they were  also aware that anything they dared to try now may result in failure once again. The ominous silence was broken by the voice of MaNdlovu who led the hall in a hymn that marked the closing of that day’s sombre meeting.

Not more than a few miles away, Luvuyo sat watching the herd intently. Although it was still winter, his worries were calmed by the fact that summer was near and her rains might grace the pastures once again. Ten calves were to be born in summer and Luvuyo feared that the cows weren’t receiving enough nutrition. Even the grass that blanketed the Transkei mountains looked parched and yellow. This was a sign that winter was still in session and the absence of the rain proved this. They had already roamed 15Km away from the kraal and the grass in the fields was disappearing rapidly.

World Water Day…where do we stand in the celebration?

An underground well

By Mustapha Sesay, Sierra Leone.

Water is an essential in our daily activities and a basic right for all to access it at affordable rate.

It is unfortunate that as the world continues to celebrate World Water Day, most developing countries including Sierra Leone suffer from acute water shortage to millions of its population.

The situation for the scramble of water in the major cities is similar to those in the remote areas. It is disturbing to see the plight of the masses in the dirty drainages in the city of Freetown in long lines cutting rubber pipes for drinking water. If such a situation exist in the cities them what can we say about the rural poor areas.

This is one major factor for the spread of water borne diseases like diarrhea or cholera.
In majority of the schools, there is the absence of non functional taps; this has serious effects on the education of our children as the lack of water enhances poor hygiene and sanitation facilities.

In our Universities, the situation is very deplorable as students go without pure and affordable drinking water not to mention a decent learning environment, and yet society continues to talk of a clean environment.

Well water that dries up easily

In the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, most policies are not actually implemented in these educational institutions despite the various policies and huge chunk of funds provided. It must be noted that institutions have a very high percentage of the youthful population that continue to die slowly from unhealthy environment now called educational places.

How long can such deplorable places continue to exist and allow our children to inhale these polluted environments?
In some schools, teachers boldly stand in front of the children and teach the importance of water in our daily lives, yet in the schools not a single tap or well water could be located.

Ecological Sanitation in post-earthquake Haiti

Vincent is showing his clean hands. Photo: Hadas

Just two years ago the city of Port-au-Prince collapsed. In a matter of minutes hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives as this proud city crumbled to the ground. In remembrance and mourning, we ask that you take a moment of silence to honor the dead and share the suffering of more than 500,000 people who remain homeless in Haiti’s capital.

There are many reasons to despair when remembering the tragedy that took place two years ago and the terrible suffering that continues today. But on the second anniversary of the earthquake that has brought so many of us together on a common mission to help Haiti, we want to share with you a story of hope. The story starts in Parc Izmery.

In those awful first days after the earthquake, when SOIL staff drove our old pickup truck down from Cap-Haitien, overflowing with the emergency medical and food supplies that your donations helped us buy, we moved into the yard behind the Matthew 25 Guest House, next door to the Parc Izmery soccer field. During those awful first days, when aftershocks were still shaking our almost broken hearts, we watched Parc Izmery turned into an emergency field hospital with volunteer medical teams from around the world conducting lifesaving surgeries on Matthew 25’s dining room table and providing ongoing medical care to the people moving into tents crowded together in the hot sun on the former soccer field.

“We are dying of Cholera”: residents of Clara town cry for help

Clara town located on Bushrod Island, a suburb of Monrovia, Liberia became famous for being the birthplace of Liberian football star George Oppong Weah.

Clara town, founded by a Methodist missionary 40 years ago, is attracting global attention in recent years, as its inhabitants are burdened by the effects of poor, inadequate and over stretched sanitation facilities, unsafe drinking water supply, decrepit drainages, and poor hygiene practices.

The Clara community has a population of 48,000 with 67 fully built up houses (and another 967 unfinished houses) inhabited by 12,335 women and 11,730 men, people, according to a community census exercise. Its residents face huge challenges in accessing improved water supply, safe sanitation and hygiene services.

Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene services is generally poor in Liberia including its capital city Monrovia. Facilities have generally old and deteriorated no thanks to a 14 year old civil war.

Statistics are also unreliable, but a 2009 story by Allwestafrica.com reports that “just one-third of Monrovia’s 1.5 million have access to clean toilets, and 20 to 30 cholera cases are reported weekly; in 2008 there were 888 suspected cases, 98 percent of them in Monrovia’s overcrowded shantytowns such as West Point, Buzzi Quarter, Clara Town, and Sawmill”

Open defecation

Raymond is a 45 year old male resident in Clara town, who admits to practicing open defecation because basic sanitation facilities are inadequate, unaffordable, and over stretched. He narrates his experience,

“When you go to the toilet, you stay in line, sometimes 100 people can be outside, and sometimes 50 people can be on the queue waiting to use the toilet. You may pou-pou (defecate) on yourself if you have running stomach”

Veronica: I ‘toilet’ in the open

Another resident, Veronica a 9^th grade female student of Saint Mary’s Catholic School in Clara Town, says some of her colleagues often contact water borne diseases due to the poor WASH services. “One of my friends had got cholera after drinking “. As a way out the school pupils resort to buying packaged water in plastic bags: “In the school, we buy us spent $5 Liberian dollars to buy Mineral water”

Though there is a toilet in her school, there are no soap and hand towels for her to ensure personal hygiene after using the toilet facilities. If lack of hand washing items is only her headache in the school, it would have been better. 15 year old Veronica faces challenges in maintaining personal menstrual hygiene due to lack of safe water and sanitation facilities in the school, saying some of her colleagues including at times excuse themselves from class work in order to cater for their mistral needs: “If the menses of any of the female students start in school, then you will tell the Teacher, and you will come home. We often miss classes and lessons because of this.”

Read the whole article here:

By Babatope Babalobi, in Monrovia.

2011 in review

To kick off the new year, we’d like to share with you data on blog’s activity in 2011. You may start scrolling!

Crunchy numbers

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,700 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 45 trips to carry that many people.

In 2011, there were 10 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 47 posts. There were 22 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 13mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was January 5th with 62 views. The most popular post that day was Can we close the loop by making money from poop? Gladys Quispe thinks so.

Click to see the whole report:

Related articles

• 2011 in review (newideasadvocacy.wordpress.com)

Nepal: Women can lead toilet construction work and support their family

The Kamalamai Integrated Water Sanitation and Hygiene (KIWASH) improvement project in Kamalamain Municipality in Sindhuli District, in the Janakpur zone of central south Nepal has envisaged adhering equity and inclusion prospective in project activities. The Centre for Integrated Urban Development (CIUD) has been working there in partnership with WaterAid in Nepal (WAN) since 2005 to provide safe and adequate water and sanitation including improvement in hygiene. One of the components is to facilitate and support in household sanitation improvement primarily focusing poor and marginalized communities in peri urban areas.

Bathanchoudi is one of the communities where toiletfacilities are being constructed. A local user committee “Bathanchoudi Batawara Tatha Tole Sudhar Samiti” has been formed to run the construction works smoothly and to make the community people accountable towards the development works and maintain the transparency. The majority of the committee members are women and from marginalized group i.e. Danuwar community. The leadership of the committee is run by Sarita Danuwar as a president of the committee.