SHI: Safe Drinking Water for 20,000 Rural Families

Che Guevara is a concentrated rural community, which belongs to the jurisdiction of the El Castillo municipality, Río San Juan. It has a population of 480 people, settled in 100 homes that currently receive excellent quality water thanks to the good use and management of the manual Chlorinator and the funds they used to purchase water meters for the rational use of the water resource, benefits provided by Self – Help International. 

As today day the Che Guevara is one of the CAPS (Drinking Water and Sanitation Committee) that have managed to improve the drinking water service in their community; but in their journey not everything has been easy, they have fallen and they have risen, but they have achieved it thanks to their perseverance in wanting to have safe water for their community. 

In 2012, Che Guevara benefited from the purification of water through the use and management of the CTI-8 Manual Chlorinator promoted by Self – Help International, but due to various technical, economic and social factors, the CAPS stopped making the water drinkable and the aqueduct was abandoned. 

In 2016, the community began a new aqueduct process combined by gravity and electric pumping with the support of the Mayor's Office, but at that time they did not reactivate the chlorination of the water, due to technical problems inherent to that system, the water was not chlorinated, the population received raw water without any treatment to make it drinkable, which raised a potential health problem in the people who drank it; for more than 6 years they were prone to disease and at risk of facing an epidemic of waterborne infections at any time. The water that reaches the tank has turbidity, a condition in which bacteria and pathogenic microorganisms in the water are encouraged to proliferate and contaminate it, so that they can harm the health of people who receive this water without any treatment to disinfect it and make it drinkable, suitable for human consumption. 

At the Health Post, visits for medical care were more frequent, mainly those most affected were children at an early age; although also older adults, since they are more vulnerable to diseases that are transmitted through contaminated water, or with a lot of turbidity. 

The residents of the Che Guevara community were in a critical situation such as the lack of purification of the water they consumed, lack of awareness of the available water resource and the waste of water due to lack of micrometers, poor distribution and coverage of water for all communities. families, and the unfair condition that caused the fixed rate for water service. 

This situation that the residents of Che Guevara were experiencing, with respect to water quality, forced them to look for solutions to improve it, as well as better organize themselves in a new CAPS directive. Once the new board was integrated, the first thing the CAPS members did was request the reactivation of the Comprehensive Technical Advisory services promoted by Self – Help International through the Clean Water Program, which had been rejected by the previous members, now the technician of the The Clean Water Program once again responds to the request and begins to provide all the technical advice necessary to help CAPS and the community get out of the problem they found themselves in. 

The first step was to train and empower the board of directors, to improve the organizational structure of the CAPS, as well as transmit and strengthen knowledge regarding Administration, Water Rate Calculation, Risk Management, Operation and Maintenance of the Aqueduct, and Use and operation of water meters. 

Self – Help International throught the Clean Water Program held technical follow-up meetings with the CAPS board to collect information on the need to acquire and install water micrometers in each one of the homes in the community, to avoid water waste and equitably measure water consumption by each of the homes of the families that use the aqueduct, according to their monthly metric consumption. 

With the CAPS board of directors, the balance of investments, costs and expenses incurred by the board in the administration, operation and maintenance of the aqueduct was carried out, as well as designing the most appropriate water rate based on costs, projecting the installed Chlorinator and water meters in operation. Also, a community assembly was held, attended by the beneficiary population of the community, to publicize and approve the new water rate, as well as the installation of water meters in each one of the houses. In addition, they again approved the installation of the water chlorinator to purify the water that reaches the tank from the natural water source, which did not receive treatment before all this process happened once again. 

Once the CAPS board had been trained and informed and approved in a community assembly, the request for funds was made to Self – Help International for the purchase of 50 water meters of the 100 that are actually needed to cover the need for the entire population and the acquisition of the chlorinator equipment and chlorine tablets to continue and maintain water purification. 

All this arduous but fruitful work has given good results in terms of water quality, the organizational structure of CAPS and fair and tariff consumption for the residents of the Che Guevara community.

Currently, the Che Guevara community has installed a chlorine tablet chlorinator, which purifies 22 thousand liters of water at two times of the day, in the morning and in the afternoon, so that all residents have access to safe water in their homes. 

Che Guevara's CAPS has already installed 50 water meters in the homes where they were most needed and those that caused a lot of water waste, in such a way that this strategy has resulted in a great benefit for everyone, since the water previously wasted, is now available for other homes. 

Yadira is the secretary of CAPS and the only woman on the board of directors. She has been trained in data collection and interpretation of results from reading water meters, as well as the calculation to obtain the cubic meter of water consumed by each home in the community. 

Access to the Clean Water Program fund has allowed communities like Che Guevara to improve the quality of their water and regulate its use and consumption, thus ensuring that everyone in the community has access to and availability of safe water every day. 

Santos is president of the Che Guevara CAPS and he said that he is very grateful with Self-Help International and its Clean Water Program, for being helping them in the acquisition of the water meters and the installation of the chlorinator, as well as in training sessions brings to their CAPS directors to handle all type of issue regarding their water system. He has commented that many times “Technical Advice or any other type of educations are not valued by the people who received it, but if we consider it to pay for it in our own,  it is the most expensive thing we could ever reach, and with Self – Help International we are receiving it for free, now we are prepare to solve problems when shows up, all the advice you keep giving us is the greatest gift we can receive.” Because due to the lack of that education, many times we get stuck because we don't know how to solve a problem, although maybe in reality it is quite easy to do, but not having the basic knowledge makes it more complicated for us to solve it, that's why we appreciate all the attention from you and the knowledge provided to us. Now we know how to maintain the chlorination system that you provided us, as well as keep control and records of the water consumption rate numbers and the cost involved in maintaining and managing the entire water aqueduct system with high quality. Thank you.

When I visited the community of Jerusalen in the municipality of Nueva Guinea, I was amazed to see almost the entire board of directors of the Drinking Water and Sanitation Committee (CAPS) be made up of women, with the exception of the president, who usually does not perform its function as he is usually focus on his personal duties. Instead, all of these women are in charge of managing and ensuring that the Jerusalem water system (Aqueduct) works and provides water to all families in the community effectively and with good quality. 

It was on June 28, 2022 when I met the women who make up the drinking water committee of this community, they represented each of the legal register positions that make up the CAPS such as: Secretary, Treasurer, Prosecutor, Member and the Plumber. On this occasion, the meeting with this CAPS, mostly represented by women, was to respond to a request from them to Self – Help International for the evaluation of their water system to achieve the installation of a chlorinator equipment in the near future in the water distribution tank, this way provide purified water to their families and members of their community, in addition to learn from training sessions the development of knowledge and skills to keep their water optimal for human consumption. 

On this occasion I want to refer to the work of Mrs. Tita, who currently holds the position of: “The Water Plumber woman”, as how the members of her Jerusalen community call her. 

Tita is a 49-year-old woman who has lived almost her entire life in the community of Jerusalen in the municipality of Nueva Guinea. She came to that community when she was only 4 years old. She has lived there for 45 years and has 3 male children who are 25, 22 and 15 years old, the youngest one is still studying in high school. 

Tita works as a plumber for her community in which she receives minimal financial support from the CAPS committee, and the rest of her duties as plumber are  voluntarily manner, to complement her family's livelihood she does simple sewing jobs from which she obtains some extra income and plus she along with her children work in the field planting grain and vegetable in a piece of land of her belongs. although Tita did not even complete the primary school, with the time pass on she has learned how to write down on her own, now, thanks to the training provided by the Clean Water Program Officer promoted by Self – Help International she learned how to keep records of the water consumption used by the people from her community. Tita told us that in each one of the training sessions she attends she have been learn several new things that helps her to improve her work, because she likes to learn and she continued saying that she does not care if what she is learning is something different from her gender, as she knows that it is somethign new and good for her own growth, since there are many people who are inhibited from growing. and she says that it is better to do a job, although hard but worthy to always support her family.

Tita continued saying that she has even learned how to use a computer that belongs to the CAPS committee and enter the data into it. She mainly uses an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the water consumption in cubic meters for each home that uses the water. She continues telling us that, although she does not have any position on the board, the Board members always call her to participate in meetings, and any other activities regarding the good management of the water where she attends it happily. She has had good and bad experiences while working as a plumber but she understands that it is part of her work and always tries to provide the best solution when needed. There are also users who have supported her for the work she does and understand her responsibility in which she feels really grateful to be recognized by the population. This way she continue motivated to work and support the CAPS directive, because she wants to always have water in her house and not have to carry water in buckets from the community well to her house, in addition to making sure that all of the people are receiving clean water and that it won´t harm the loved ones.  

She continues with her narrative saying: Since 2019, I have been performing the position of “plumber”, I am in charge of activating the operation of the pump and well to send water to the water tank distribution for the homes in the community. Even if it is at night or early morning, I have to fulfill this task. She smiles when she tells me this, because she says that she is also always doing the job of prosecutor, because the person in charge of this position is a new member and she need to learn all the process to be follow up reason why she is willing to support her, so in some way she is always supporting the members of the CAPS board and the only thing that matters to her is the well-being of the population in general. 

Tita is also in charge of checking the operation of the chlorinator and placing the chlorine tablets inside the chlorinator, as well as monitoring the use of the tablets to provide good quality drinking water to the population of the community. She always performs prosecutorial functions, evaluating what is right and refuting what is being done wrong. She also does plumbing and pipe repair work, installing and reading meters, as well as calculating water consumption per home. 

Tita always take care of the water distribution tank, she calls on the other women to clean and wash it in its inside, because of her concern is that the population does not get sick, so she works hard to maintain the storage concrete tank clean, washing it with bleach and scrubbing its internal walls to remove any dirt or sediment that it may have. To fill it and give the appropriate treatment to the water before being distributed to homes, she does this work frequently and she feels proud of collaborating so that the water in her community is of good quality. She also urges other women not to fear the change and learn things that are beneficial for them and their families. She thanks the Clean Water Program for the dedication to training and skill development that she has been putting into practice in her job duties as a plumber. 

Self – Help International is proud to share the growth and commitment of this woman who is dedicated to do jobs that were previously considered only for men. This woman is an example of self-improvement and self-learning in that community.