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.

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.

Tamil Nadu: eco‐san toilet promoter Sridharan

Varadharajapuram is a village on the banks of River Kaveri in Thottiyam Block of Tiruchirappalli District, Tamil Nadu, India. Being a water‐logged area because of the closeness to the river, people in the village cannot construct low‐cost toilet models. Except five families, the remaining families were practicing open defecation on the river banks and on the road sides leading to the banana groves.

Sridharan, a 32 year old youth, one day had a chance to attend a village meeting of women self‐help groups formed by Gramalaya, a local NGO. The field staff from Gramalaya was talking about the formation of Association for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (AWASH ) committees in the village. They also briefed the women  about the dangers of open defecation nearby the water bodies and the importance of having toilets at the households.

Everyone has a story to tell

Before starting the story of our community, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Chedorlaomer Villa I am 34 years old, and  live in The Maelstrom, small town of Pance, Cali, Colombia.  I work as plumber and I am responsible for carrying out maintenance at the drinking water plant (PTAP) and the wastewater treatment plant (PTARD). We are a privileged community in that today we have drinking water and a system of to process wastewater, perhaps the oldest such system in the municipality.

Back to the history, our district, “La Vorágine”,  was founded by Mr. Nicolas Felipe Mejía in the year of 1943 and is one of the 13 districts forming the small town of Pance, where the crystal and cold water of the river attract many foreign and Colombian tourists at weekends or in the holiday season.

Vereda La Vorágine

This district was originally called La Vega (the fertile lowland).  The district’s economy was based around two coal mines.  At one time only a dusty bridle path  linked La Vorágine with Cali. It was only in the 1950s that the highway was built.  Since the 1960s when tourism started to rise, La Voragina has been a tourist destination.

Construction of the aqueduct

With the increase in tourism, the need to seek other sources to supply the community with water increased and the water from the river was of very poor quality.  In 1980 the Municipal Public Department of Health (SSPM) started a project to improve this situation.

Nepal: EcoSan toilet promotional campaign spreads in Nagarkot

Ms. Nanu Maiya Giri, principal of Chuna Devi Lower Secondary School appreciates the effort of her community people proudly. She claims that it’s their dedication that turned the catchment area of school into a total sanitation zone. According to her, after prolonged dedication the Magar tole, Danda Gaunt tole, Kuwa Pani tole, Ghising tole and Gairi Gaun of Nagarkot Village Development Committee (VDC) were declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) on 25 December, 2010 in Nagarkot.

Ms. Nanu Maiya Giri sharing her expeteince

Earlier to this declaration, villagers were not aware on health and hygiene, and open defecation used to be rampant. After participating in a training programme on School Led Total Sanitation (SLTS), organized by Department of Water Supply and Sewerage (DWSS) and UN Habitat, Nanu Maiya realized the importance of toilet in the surrounding communities of Chuna Devi School. She, thus, shared the knowledge gained from the training with other teaching staffs and her students at school, who later supported her in driving SLTS campaign in and around the school catchment.

Celebrating community management of water in Cochabamba

We have just celebrated four years of community management of our water supply in this part of Cochabamba. It is a celebration not of perfection but of hard work; not a story with a happy ending, but a story where we meet the continual challenges.

Lack of water is a constant problem in the Southern zone of Cochabamba since the water network from the public company Semapa does not reach us.  We could perhaps have managed to attract a project to bring us water supply, but it would take a long time and we feared that we would be disregarded by the authorities. So we followed the path that some neighbours have taken to organise themselves and form a water committee to tackle the lack of drinking water.

Our Community Association for Drinking Water and Sanitation was formed on April 22 2007, as a public service community association with charitable status. Its primary purpose is to administrate, operate and maintain the drinking water system and keep it clean. This association has managed to supply water to the districts between the rivers, Trafalgar, Santa Fe and part of Bello Horizonte (Villa Payer-District 14), about 45 minutes bus ride from the city centre.

To solve the problems in my community we needed to clear the route dig, clean and put the whole thing together. This community effort was the only way to obtain good results.