At CWEF, our work in the Yunnan Province is focused in two main areas: education and service. The service projects in Yunnan consist primarily of water projects. We implement fresh water systems in areas that do not have direct access to fresh water. In these remote areas, village women often spend three to four hours per day hauling water down the mountain to their homes. Our water systems bring fresh water to their doorsteps. After building a water cistern, we then lay water pipes to transfer water from the cistern to the homes in the village.
Our service projects don’t stop with the implementation of a water system, however. Education is also directly incorporated to our service projects. We hold health and hygiene training for water projects. We teach mothers how to bathe their children; we teach the children how to wash their hands and brush their teeth. Overall, we show the villagers a comprehensive look at how fresh water will improve their health.
This week, I learned just how important the education component is in our service projects. Any organization that just completes a service project is not doing enough to help the village. The people need to learn good health practices to really improve their quality of life. My coworkers saw a prime example of this as they visited a village in Yunnan near the Vietnam border.
The location they visited is NOT a CWEF project site; instead, the villagers have built their own water system with funds designated by the government. They used bamboo (in a gutter-like system) to collect rainwater that drained into a hole in the ground that functioned as a water well. As my coworkers examined the system, it appeared to be effective in providing a small amount of fresh water to the villagers. The water was flowing cleanly into the water well; and the water well appeared to be soundly built.
However, with a closer look, it was obvious that there was a fundamental issue in the system. The water well was placed directly beside a pig pen. The waste from the pig pen was not the problem though. The waste was contained and drained away from the water well. Rather, the problem was a simple one. The problem had an effortless solution. The problem wouldn’t exist if the villagers were educated on hygiene.
The problem was this: the bucket used to get water out of the well was being stored on the floor of the pig pen. Each time a person finished using the bucket, they would place it on the feces and mud-covered floor of the pig pen. The next time they needed water, someone would pick up the dirty bucket and lower it into the water well. And in the process, they inadvertently contaminated all of the drinking water.
The villagers didn’t know any better. They didn’t realize that a dirty bucket will directly affect their health. They had no insight into the damage that the feces-covered bucket could cause.
This story highlights how different our perspectives are from the villagers’ perspectives. Of course, we know to brush our teeth, to wash our hands, to clean our food properly. But in the village, the people have never lived this way. They don’t understand the negative consequences associated with poor hygiene.
As you can see, the educational component is key to an effective project. The people in the village need to be educated on health and hygiene. For this reason, CWEF not only implements fresh water systems, but we also teach the villagers how to use clean water to lead a healthy lifestyle.
