Water Projects and Community Buy-in
I just stumbled across this post at Slate. The basic idea is pretty straightforward: clean water is important, water projects are a good investment, and there are plenty of ways to get involved in bringing potable water to people in marginalized communities. The most interesting point, however, is the nod to the importance of having the community “deeply involved” in the process. Without local buy-in, you end up with broken wells and unused latrines.
This recognition got me thinking about a couple of stories from places the IHF has worked: Guatemala and India. The town of Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala - home of Just Apparel and a number of other IHF partners - gets its water directly from Lake Atitlan. Apart from being stressed by the growing human population and completely over-fished, the lake is also far from pure, especially around the lakeside towns like Santiago. The lake is not only the source of drinking water, but also the site of clothes washing and bathing and the recipient of sewage and terrifyingly dirty run-off. Consequently, Petri dishes with samples of the bacterial concentration from close to the shore (which happens to be about where the town’s water pump is situated) are truly a sight to behold.
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| Women washing clothing in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala |
Now, a few years ago, after the mudslide that destroyed much of one neighborhood of Santiago, one of the myriad aid and government organizations that came to town decided to treat the Santiago’s water supply with chlorine in order to combat the spread of disease - especially crucial given the large amount of mud and other material that entered the lake as a result of the slide.
To their shock, the people of Santiago responded aggressively against the introduction of treated water. It tasted contaminated to them, and stories even began circulating that the government was trying to poison people with the water. While the move to purify drinking water was a good one - and the end goal of pure water for Santiago is vitally important - the people who implemented the plan hadn’t succeeded in talking with community members and spreading the word about what to expect. As a result, the people rejected the project. The water in Santiago today is no cleaner than it was before the mudslide.
The water experience in Santiago is indicative of a larger issue for development organizations: how best to interact with the populations we’re trying to serve. At the IHF, we’ve decided that it’s always best to err on the side of too much deliberation and consultation. Sure, it can slow the process down. But it can also lead to highly successful interventions like the IHF cookstove project. By working with community members to identify what kind of stove would be satisfactory (that is, what kind of stove they would actually use), we managed to come up with a design that worked not only in theory, but also in practice. The same sort of principles are extremely important as the world tries to address the issue of access to safe drinking water.
So, by all means, contribute to the organizations that the folks at Slate recommend. Send letters to your representatives about the Water for the World Act. But make it known that you want results, and that means you want projects built on dialogue, local involvement, and flexibility to a variety of contexts. Water may be the same the world over, but that doesn’t mean the way we provide it has to be too.
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