By Louise Ashton and Chris McCall
Development work can at times be baffling. Even with deliberate and substantial research, the best laid plans are met with complications and unforeseen obstacles. Members of GPPI’s Project Honduras are learning this lesson first hand as they continue to advance their main long-term initiative of improving household water sanitation practices in the community of Balfate.
For over a year now, Project Honduras has been working in Balfate to increase access to safe water. Over 95% of the town’s households receive water from a community-owned distribution system. Using fees assessed on all participating homes, Balfate has hired a full-time employee to maintain this infrastructure; a job which includes filling storage tanks with well water, treating the tanks with chlorine, and repairing damage anywhere in the vast networks of PVC piping used to deliver water to individual households. The main drawback to the current delivery system is that the vast majority of homes can only be provided with water once every five days. Families must estimate how much they will need until the next delivery and find a way of storing it in or around their houses. Engineers working with Project Honduras have determined that the largest factor contributing to contaminated water is that families stockpiling their infrequent deliveries from the town’s system are using poor storage practices.
Last fall, Project Honduras received an enabling grant from the ERM Foundation to help with the implementation of a household-level water filter intervention as well as two capital improvements to the community’s distribution system. These initiatives are all about improving the quality of water that Balfate residents consume, in turn reducing their susceptibility to water-borne illnesses. They began in earnest when last year’s team of GPPI students conducted a baseline survey of every household in the community to test the quality of their water and ask basic questions regarding their storage and sanitation practices.
In the summer of 2011, Project Honduras leaders Louise Ashton and Cindy Brenner spent a week in Balfate to initiate a pilot project for the filter intervention in four houses. Each family attended an installation workshop where they brought their own buckets on which to install Sawyer Point One filters. They were also trained on how to properly use and clean their new devices. By asking families to provide their own buckets, Ashton and Brenner hoped to ensure that each household felt a sense of ownership and responsibility for their filters. All four families were provided with a diary and asked to record when they cleaned their filter as well as any additional comments or suggestions they had regarding the filter’s performance. Additionally, the worker in charge of operating the community water system proved an invaluable partner for Project Honduras, agreeing to visit the households in the interim and take samples so that the team could continuously monitor results.
As the fall semester began, Project Honduras welcomed a new team of students and decided to scale up the water filter intervention in November. Ashton and Project Honduras alum Diana Cubas delivered 30 additional filters while also checking in with the four original households. Increasing the number of filters in the pilot program will provide the team with a larger base for analysis in determining what adjustments are needed to ensure a successful project, and indeed, how to define success.
Visiting the four original families in November has already allowed Project Honduras to anticipate some challenges that may arise. As Ashton neared the first home, the head of house recognized her, ran into the backyard and retrieved the filter out from under a storage pile. Eventually the front door opened and the filter was back in the living room where it had been left after the summer trip. Trying to take a water sample proved impossible as there was no water flow, a surefire sign that the filter had not been cleaned often enough. Despite attempts to coax out the truth, the family insisted that they had been using the filter and that nothing was wrong with it. Another household from the original pilot simply admitted that they had no use for the filter as they found the flow too slow and preferred their rain catchment system. They would not, however, return the filter as it would mean they would have a bucket with a hole in it from where the device had been removed. Of the four homes involved in the project, only one family had clearly been using the filter and keeping records as was requested of them in June.
These findings raised some interesting questions for Project Honduras. The filters are free and families of the community are aware that their water becomes contaminated when they store it for so long. So why would they not use the filter? Unfortunately, there are many possible reasons. Project Honduras’ primary task on its upcoming trip this March is to decipher those reasons, decide which are most prevalent in the community, and find solutions to address these concerns. It is possible that the flow of water from the filter is deemed too slow to be practical. This may suggest that families either fail to grasp the benefit of taking more time to use it or need to better anticipate their need for using water so as to be less inconvenienced by the wait. Another answer stems from literature on international development which questions whether giving people something for free leads to them valuing it less or gives them the perception that it is useless. Finally, much has been said of the extreme difficulty in getting people to change their behavior patterns even if such a change would be beneficial to their own well-being.
As these questions emerge, the members of Project Honduras are looking forward to their upcoming trip in March when they will have the opportunity to follow up with the now 34 families participating in the water filter intervention. The team is learning first-hand that in addition to having a strong initial plan, development work also requires troubleshooting, flexibility and patience. These skills will all be on full display this spring as Project Honduras works to improve and expand their water project in the hopes of making a sustainable difference in the daily lives of Balfate’s families.
To learn more about Project Honduras, visit the organization’s Facebook page by searching for “GPPI Project Honduras” or email the group at projecthonduras1@gmail.com.
Established in 1995, the Georgetown Public Policy Review is the McCourt School of Public Policy’s nonpartisan, graduate student-run publication. Our mission is to provide an outlet for innovative new thinkers and established policymakers to offer perspectives on the politics and policies that shape our nation and our world.
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