CLEAN WATER

World Vision works in impoverished, mostly rural areas to provide potable water, improved sanitation, and hygiene education (WASH) so that waterborne illness decreases, health improves, and the burden on women and children is lessened by reducing the distance to water sources. World Vision’s programs include the voices of the poorest members of the community. We work with community leaders to solicit the participation of members of both genders, people of varying ages (from children through the elderly), and those with disabilities and illnesses.

Over the past 27 years, World Vision has provided 12 million people with the many benefits of clean water. We are now dramatically scaling up our WASH programs, with the goal of reaching 1 million beneficiaries per year. As one of the leading WASH nongovernmental organizations globally in both funding and footprint, World Vision invests about $90 million per year to operate WASH programs in 57 countries.

Providing hygiene education and sanitation facilities, like latrines and handwashing stations, dramatically multiplies the health benefits of clean water by helping to reduce disease transmission through fecal contamination and unwashed hands. Combining water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) interventions can cut preventable child deaths by up to 57 percent (according to the World Health Organization); reduce chronic malnutrition by 40 percent; reduce school absenteeism among girls by 50 percent; and obtain an 8:1 economic return in target communities (UNICEF).

So intertwined are the issues of water, sanitation, and hygiene that they have been combined into one sector known in the global aid community as “WASH.”

World Vision drills deep and shallow borehole wells; refurbishes broken water systems; constructs hand-dug wells; and installs other systems, such as rainwater harvesting systems, capped natural spring systems, and mechanized water systems. Our five-year goal in Africa is to increase clean water access (at least 20 liters per person per day) from 43 percent to 64 percent in target communities by 2016, representing 5 million people in 10 countries in Africa.

To ensure the long-term sustainability of WASH facilities, we train WASH committees to maintain and repair water points. Comprised of community volunteers, these committees take responsibility for operating and maintaining facilities, using a fee-collection system to pay for repairs when needed. As an example of the sustainability for which we strive, one study conducted in 2003 in the Greater Afram Plains of Ghana showed that, as many as eight years after being drilled, 92 percent of wells surveyed still had functioning hand pumps, and 87 percent were still providing an adequate supply of safe water.

Our sanitation and hygiene interventions focus on promoting lasting behavior change. Instead of simply building latrines, World Vision uses a participatory, community-driven approach that motivates households to build, maintain, and regularly use their own latrines. Hygiene education encourages community members to modify their hygiene habits by washing their hands and dishes with soap (or ash) and practicing safe water handling. Our five-year goal is to increase access to sanitation facilities from 35 percent to 50 percent and to increase hygiene education from 10 percent to 50 percent in target communities, representing more than 6 million people.

World Vision’s WASH programs are playing a vital part in reaching the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal to reduce child mortality. For example, an independent evaluation by Hydroconseil in 2011 from our West Africa WASH programs in Ghana, Mali, and Niger showed significant improvements in access to water and sanitation for families in target communities, as well as a decrease in cases of diarrhea by up to 17 percent (depending on the country) and near-elimination of Guinea worm.

To streamline our work and become more efficient, we’re working on some key innovations that we’re pretty excited about:

Geographic Information System (GIS): We are developing a GIS to track information across our WASH programs in 10 countries in Africa. The system connects WASH interventions to global coordinates and streamlines the collection, analysis, and reporting of WASH-related achievements. World Vision expects this system to be scaled up and running by 2013.

Learning centers: We have established three regional learning centers in Africa that focus on providing specialized technical support to ensure quality programming and disseminating best-practice information among stakeholders, including government agencies, universities, and community leaders.

Low-cost water supply: World Vision is investing in smaller, trailer-mounted drill rigs that cost half the price and require half the crew of larger, traditional drill rigs. We are also piloting an alternative, market-based approach to water supply through manual well-drilling using augers, which cuts costs by a factor of 10.