One development opportunity leads to another in Nepal

Women carrying water through the mountains of nepal.

Credit: WaterAid / Josh Hobbins

WaterAid partner organisation Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH) have been working to improve the living standard of communities in Nepal's rural Eastern Region through delivery of safe water, health and sanitation services.

The results have been striking, producing a number of knock-on benefits.

Three project communities Sandhane, Sanodhappar and Jagretar were identified as areas deprived of development opportunities, without access to potable drinking water and adequate sanitation.

People in these communities often suffered from water-borne diseases and spent a great deal of time collecting water from distant sources. This led to economic stagnation as people had neither the health nor the time to engage in other activities.

Until two years back people bought vegetables from the local market despite the entire community consisting of farmers. Due to open defecation and use of contaminated water, diseases such as diarrhoea, worms, jaundice and scabies troubled the majority of the population, especially children. As a result people had to spend large sums of money on medical expenses.

Since 2001 NEWAH has worked with local partners to provide each community with piped drinking water systems and partially subsidised latrine facilities. Hygiene education and community management training programmes have also been rolled out.

People have been trained in masonry production and kitchen gardening to sustain the programme as well as improve livelihood opportunities.

Now people are able to drink clean water through 26 tap stands and eat fresh vegetables as kitchen gardening practices have become widespread. Many households now use wastewater to grow vegetables for self consumption and income generation.

Yagya Raj Bhandari, a secondary school teacher from Jagretar says, "before the implementation of the project only 10% of households in this community used to eat vegetables with their meals, now every household eats vegetables regularly."

He feels that eating vegetables on a regular basis has had a positive impact on the health of the people.

Dak Kumari Magar from Sandhane says she has generated enough money to buy stationary materials (like pencils and books) for her children from selling her kitchen garden vegetables. "Earlier there was a lack of drinking water in the community, let alone the possibility of vegetable farming without any irrigation facilities".

Easy access to water has saved time for other activities. Samjhana Bishwakarma a local woman says, "before we had to walk 40 minutes to fetch a pot of water. This means spending over three hours to fetch the minimum of five pots required in a day. Now since the water point is only five minutes away, in the time we used to spend fetching one pot we now fetch nine."

Now the time saved is utilised for farming, cleaning, relaxing and other miscellaneous activities.

Bimal Nepali a resident of Maubasi, who acquired masonry skills through the project has learned to construct water points and water tanks and is now earning a good living. He says that he earns around 30 to 35 thousand rupees annually through his skills.

A water point maintenance fee collected from every consumer household in the community amounts to more than Rs. 22 thousand. This capital has been mobilised to provide loans for buying vegetable seeds, breeding domestic animals, health check-ups and to carry out further income generative activities.

Simply providing safe water, sanitation and hygiene education in these three communities has produced lasting benefits and created new opportunities for those involved.

Author
Laba Hari Budhathoki, NEWAH, Eastern Regional Office, Biratnagar (c/o Anamika Singh asingh@newah.org.np)