On teh ground

Most women and girls in India resort to unhealthy measures to meet their menstrual hygiene needs. Sanitary pads are an unaffordable luxury in large areas of the country. More than 60% of the population in southwest Sumba only has access to rainwater. During the dry season, they are forced to buy or obtain it from unsafe sources, which causes a high rate of diarrheal diseases that cause malnutrition in children.

Nusa Tenggara Timur is a province with an arid climate, with only four months of rainfall (from December to March). Drinking water is scarce: 63.05% of the families in southeast Sumba do not have access to a source of drinking water.

Presently the communities collect rain water to drink and cook in household tanks (with a capacity of around 5,000 m3). But during the months with no rainfall (from April to November) they do not have any rain water available and their only chance to collect it is from unsafe sources of drinking water, at a distance of 4-5 Km, or to buy water from tanker trucks, which costs between 200.000 and 250.000 rupees, a price very few are able to pay.

Due to this shortness and the lack of sanitation (the Sumba Barat Daya district has the highest percentage of population that defecates in the open) children suffer often diarrhoeal diseases, which worsen their level of malnutrition.

Moreover, the district has the highest percentage of malaria cases in the entire province.

In detail

We will carry out the construction of two wells to provide drinking water to the community: one in Kapaka Madeta and another one in Koki, thus contributing to the health improvement, especially to the reduction of diseases caused by the consumption of contaminated water.

We will identify the suitable location for the abstraction of drinking water, we will provide the managing board in charge of building the well (chosen by the community) with the necessary tools and materials to do so.

The said board will organise the Drinking Water Management Committee, which will be in charge of the sustainability and management of the water once the wells are in operation. This committee will work together with the Government of the District and the community authorities in the design, monitoring and inauguration of the wells.

Each well will be drilled in a communal plot of 5.5 x 5 m, in which we will install a pumping system, a tank for the storage of water and a public fountain, which will be accessed by the population of each community.

We will also build an office for the secretariat of the Committee..

What will be the social impact of this project?  

The project is included in the long term projects that Wahana Visi Indonesia (the local partner of World Vision in Indonesia) carries out in Sumba Barat Daya, southeast of Sumba, which include the work with the staff of the posyandu, community programmes of integrated services, promoted by the Indonesian government to improve the care provided in health and nutrition and to train the communities on how to prevent the most common diseases and child malnutrition and actions to improve the access to education