The pipeline to Lamra, Nepal
Tuesday, 2 January 2007
During a recent visit to Nepal, Tim Peek met villagers working together with Concern and local NGO Kirdarc, to provide their remote mountain village with a steady supply of clean water.
LAMRA, NEPAL - As the setting sun colors the snows of this valley's Himalayan peaks, 65-year-old Dhankanya Nepali looks up at the darkening sky and adjusts her headscarf.
She is waist deep in a mile-long trench, in the middle of a line of some 250 villagers steadily digging their way toward home.
"It's a lot of work," Dhankanya says, "but we are digging so we will have clean drinking water."
Dhankanya and her fellow villagers are in the middle of a huge pipeline project they hope will supply their remote mountain village with a steady supply of clean, plentiful water.
The project is the result of a partnership between this village, a local community group called Kirdarc, and Concern Worldwide.
"Places like Lamra are so remote that they've really been left behind by most NGOs and the government," says Linda Burns, country director for Concern Nepal.
"Working with our local partners in these communities, Concern is able to get to these difficult places and do the work that will make a difference."
One of Nepal's major natural resources is water
Rivers and streams criss-cross this mountainous nation, fed by the snows of the Himalayas.
But, ironically, little of that water has been developed into the clean and endless supplies most Europeans take for granted.
In Dhankanya's village of Lamra, seven decrepit taps supply water for just four hours a day.
Long walks and limited supply mean most people here use water from the nearby river, a source fouled by human waste. As a result, diarrhoea and other water-borne illnesses are common.
"The water pipeline will cut down on disease and improve health here," Dhankanya notes.
The pipeline, which runs some three miles from a clean mountain spring, is part of a larger water and sanitation program targeted at 1,222 households in the remote Karnali valley of Nepal.
The programme is managed by Concern's local partner, Karnali Integrated Rural Development and Research Centre (Kirdarc).
"We are working to provide services to the poorest of the poor at the household level through community education and organizing," Kirdarc's executive director Kushendra Mahat says of his group’s mission.
Community Involvement
Lamra is a village of 1,600 subsistence farmers. They decided that the priority for the village was a clean and sustainable water source.
Kirdarc, with help from Concern, supplies the technical know-how, the raw materials and training.
The community supplies the power: each house sends one person to work on the construction crew; they also pay a small fee to maintain the new water system – poorer households pay less.
"During the planning phase, we had discussions with the community to decide what they will provide and what we will provide," says Mahat.
"We cannot give them everything because not only is it expensive, but also they will not have ownership of the project and work to take care of it."
"This is how we prefer to work," says Concern's Linda Burns. "By supporting a pre-existing community organization, we are increasing our effectiveness.
"They are already here; they know the issues and have the relationships in the community. What we are doing by giving them technical expertise and materials is the real added value."
An elected Water Users' Committee oversees the Lamra project; another Tap Users' Committee will maintain the 29 new water taps and educate people on proper hygiene and sanitation.
Laxmi Kathyat is treasurer of the Users' Committee. "So many organizations are here in Nepal, but we really believe in Kirdarc because they have been in the community so long that we have learned to trust them," she says.
"We are very happy to do this work to get clean water. We are doing it not just for ourselves, but for our children and our children's children. We will have clean water now for a long, long time."
