According to the 2006 UNDP Human Development Report, more than 1 billion people around the world lack access to clean water. Oregon Direct Action is working with Green Empowerment and Soluciones Practicas in San Pablo, a province of Peru, where nearly 40% of its roughly 24,000 people get their water from unimproved sources (e.g. rivers, streams, ditches). This, coupled with the lowest electrification rate in the country, magnifies poor health, education, social and gender equality, and economic opportunity. According to the World Bank, 53% of the Peru lives below the poverty line. This extreme poverty also has a detrimental effect on the environment, as people are often forced to the margins of society. Safe and reliable water access is at the core of San Pablo’s development. Our goal for 2008-2009 is to work with our partners and the affected communities to provide this basic need in an economically, environmentally, and culturally sustainable fashion.
This project fits within a larger development framework imparted by Soluciones Practicas. Access to safe and reliable drinking water will reduce incidences of gastro-intestinal illness, displace the need for women and children to spend hours fetching water so they can instead focus on education, health & nutrition, and pursue micro-enterprise activities; and restore the local watershed.
As of October 2008, we are in project design creating a needs assessment to determining what the communities of the region want, the extent to which they need it, and our capacity to provide it. Green Empowerment’s Latin American Program Manager, Anna Garwood, is in Peru, working with Soluciones Practicas and others on this needs assessment. Her work has already clearly determined that the people of this region need electricity and especially clean water, as many of them drink from contaminated lagoons, streams, and drainage ditches. We’ve also established that the village of Suro Antivo will be the testing grounds for what will scale to be a larger project.
As of December 2008, we have designed a survey to be given to members of the village as part of a larger needs assessment. We are now working on developing an educational curriculum to impart knowledge about health and sanitation issues as well as an emotional sense of their importance. We are hoping to implement methodology developed for marketing and advertising as well use alternative methods of instruction, such as theater, to more effectively teach and promote healthy habits.
Besides this, we are also currently fundraising to pay the expenses of the project. We are happy to say that we have already secured $15,000 for San Pablo from Christadelphian Meal A Day Fund of the Americas! Our budget breakdown will come soon.
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