Empowering Rural Communities for Sustainable Water Access in Rwanda
Explore the challenges and solutions for maintaining handpumps in rural Rwanda, emphasizing community-driven approaches like forming Water Users Committees to ensure long-term functionality. Discover the cultural richness and natural beauty of Rwanda while learning about the collaborative efforts to improve water access in rural areas.
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Presentation Transcript
Name Katsuhito Nishimura Host Country Rwanda Rwamagana District Office (Eastern Province of Rwanda) Workplace Community Development (Water and Sanitation) Occupation
Scenery of Rwanda / Capital City - Country Called Land of Thousand Hills - Beautiful Landscape - Capital City Kigali: Cleanest City in Africa
Scenery of Rwanda / Rural Areas - Rice Fields and Banana Trees - Unpaved Roads - Scenery of Village
Rwandan Food - Traditional food called Igisafuria - Meat, Potatoes, Bananas, Onions boiled together, with peanut flavor - Like Japanese food Nikujaga - Popular Daily Meal: Rwanda Buffet - Chips, Beans, Pasta, Rice, etc.
Getting Water in Rural Area - In some rural areas, water pipes are not connected to houses. - People have to go outside to get water from public taps or handpump wells. - Parents usually ask their children to bring water from outside. However, it is hard work for them.
Getting Water in Rural Area - Many foreign teams build new handpumps to help people in villages. However, the handpumps usually break down after a few years. - After that, they are often abandoned. People don t have enough money to fix them, or don t know how to fix them. - Children have to get water from different water sources. Sometimes they are very far, or they are not clean. Question How can we help them so that the handpumps always keep working? What do they need?
Do you think it is a good idea that we (volunteers) fix the handpumps for them? Do you think it is a good idea to give them money to fix them? Maybe not. What if it breaks down again? Do we have to help them forever? The goal of our activates is to help local people so that they can keep the handpumps working for a long time, and fix them by themselves.
Our activities - We help people in the village to make water users committee (WUC). - The WUC collects a little money from people using water every month. - If they continue to collect money little by little, they can save a lot of money after a few years (in case the handpump breaks down). Then, they can use it to fix handpumps. - The members of WUC are elected from people in the village. We give advice to village officers about how to elect members. - It is like an election of class officers in your schools.
Our activities - We also introduce a technician (in Rwanda) of handpumps to WUC members. They can call him/her whenever the handpumps are broken. - Sometimes we provide a technical training, so that they can fix the handpumps by themselves. - We also tell people about importance of taking care of the handpumps by themselves, and encourage them to keep them clean to get good water.
Pleasure and Difficulty of Activities I am pleased to see local people becoming aware that we can do it by ourselves . - People often give up fixing handpumps, because they think they have no money, they don t know how to do it, and just wait for someone to come and fix it - However after we suggest them to make Water Users Committee to collect money little by little, and show them how to fix it, they become aware that they can do it by themselves. It is challenging for me to communicate with local people in their local language, Kinyarwanda. - People in the villages usually cannot speak English, but only their local language.
