2009 Message from Peter Dwan, Head of International Programs

Children enjoying their new water source in Liquica District.

Credit: WaterAid Australia/P.Dwan

Timor-Leste remains one of the poorest countries in Asia, where the majority of the population are subsistence farmers in remote rural villages, struggling to grow enough for their immediate needs. Apart from deficiencies in nutrition, people’s well-being is further compromised by lack of access to adequate health and education services. Underpinning much of Timor’s poverty is the fact that almost three quarters of the rural population do not have access to an improved water supply, and even more do not have access to any form of basic sanitation. As a result, water related diseases, predominantly diarrhoea, are a major cause of illness and death, particularly amongst young children under five years of age.

Hygiene Education Play, Aileu.

Credit: WaterAid Australia

WaterAid is one of a number of agencies who are working with the government of Timor-Leste to address this critical situation. At this stage our efforts are still small in comparison with the needs of the whole country, but we are slowly building momentum as we learn how best to adapt our methodologies to the local context in Timor-Leste.

In Aileu and Lautem districts we continued to work in partnership with Plan Timor-Leste and a number of local Non Government Organisation (NGO) partners, which has resulted in a further eight villages in 2008 receiving water and sanitation facilities and related hygiene education.

The children were enthusiastic to adopt improved hygiene behaviours.

Credit: WaterAid Australia

With the support of our local partners in 2008, WaterAid was also able to expand our program of support in Liquica district to an additional 11 villages. Utilising the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) methodology, all households have been able to build their own toilets for the first time. Internationally, sanitation programs typically fail from lack of commitment from households, so that toilets are often built but seldom used. CLTS has been producing some encouraging results as it involves a no subsidy approach, which maximises household’s ownership of their toilets. Our review studies of last year’s projects indicate that one year after construction, a high percentage of toilets are still in use and being well maintained.

The education workshop developed ideas for better hygiene education.

Credit: WaterAid Australia

WaterAid has been in Timor-Leste since 2005 and we now play a significant role in the rural water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector. WaterAid actively participates in a number of government led sector sharing and coordination meetings and forums. This is vitally important as large inroads into the access needs of the population will only be addressed if the whole sector works together and builds capacity to scale up our activities.

WaterAid Australia is working with the Government of Timor-Leste to increase its capacity and skills base in the area of water, sanitation and improved hygiene, in order to address the current lack of capacity within Government, local NGOs and private service providers. This is the major hurdle to effective and sustainable delivery of WASH in rural areas of Timor-Leste. WaterAid provides regular training and day-to-day mentoring and support to our local implementing partners, but the local skills deficit limits the rate at which our programs can be expanded. We have developed formal partnership agreements with a number of local organisations which will provide our partners with a degree of long-term certainty, through which we hope to be able to address the long-term capacity development of our local partner organisations.

On a very positive note, in addition to their own resources, the Timor-Leste government is receiving significant external support to the rural WASH sector from both the Australian (AusAID) and United States (USAID) governments. WaterAid has established strong relationships with both these programs and is well placed to play a collaborative and catalytic role in maximising the potential benefits of this level of support, in both local building and scaling up of implementation activities. Indeed, the next few years should prove to be exciting times, as the possibilities of harnessing the financial and technical resources that now are available to the rural WASH sector are realised.

In 2008 WaterAid’s total program expenditure in Timor-Leste was $637,576 with 3,800 water and 3,800 sanitation beneficiaries.