Access to a clean, reliable water source is a basic human right. Yet so many people around the world are denied this. Water security is increasing as an international issue and its health must be protected through research and building community capacity. The International Monetary Fund places Laos 48th in its table of 184 countries from poorest to richest. Even in the world famous UNESCO World Heritage city of Luang Prabang, the fourth largest Lao city, people do not drink the water despite it being filtered. Just 60km away in Phonesay district are remote villagers drinking untreated surface and river water detrimental to health. Phonesay is targeted by the Lao government strategic development plan to improve the population?s health, water, sanitation and hygiene, agriculture and livelihood.
There are three ethnic groups in this community: Lao, Khamou and Hmong. The main occupations are farmers, gardeners and weavers. There are 32,716 people (16,301 girls) and 59 villages. There are 27 villages along the Pa River. The river supports life for every family. But only two villages can currently consume tap water, from a small water supply treatment plant.
Therefore, the project seeks to train and install customized clean water filtering systems using locally available materials in target villages (bio-char filter using a plastic barrel). Encouraging poor uneducated villages in remote areas to sustainably manage the lands immediately feeding into the rivers from which they draw their polluted disease-causing drinking water is a big ask. Our project attempts to reverse-engineering this project by starting with the micro issue of sustainable health and then gradually expands the mindset of the targets to gradually backtrack to the bigger picture of how their current hygiene and agricultural practices actually cause the bad health they experience. In this way we can then open the dialogue working with community leaders brainstorming strategies they themselves offer to address sustainability of their natural resources. And we can work with them training and installing customized clean water filtering systems using locally available materials in target villages (bio-char filter using a plastic barrel).
The project will focus in three strategic village locations (secondary school, household and shop) in the villages of Tha Pho, Huay Mun and Poung Pao. Twenty target villagers will be selected from each village including teachers from the Tha Pho secondary school. This project will serve to educate target villagers on preparing materials, protecting watersheds, and gauging interest in community water solutions. Villagers will be encouraged to build the filters nearby to their house rather than the norm of taking water for daily uses directly from the river. Villagers will gain skills, knowledge and how to apply these to construct the bio-char water treatment plants themselves using local materials and tools. By working with our model village and getting them to embrace sustainable practices we believe the innovation will quickly start to diffuse along the riverbanks from one village to the next. This will necessarily be a long term vision for our small project but a transformation we feel will yield big changes over a longer time. From small things big things will grow.