Step 1: Community RequestFreshwater Malawi is committed to a ‘social work approach’ to water projects. We see water as an entryway to community intervention and empowerment. As a demand driven organization, all projects are initiated by the communities-both schools and villages. A leading member from the community, usually the village chief or leader of the school management committee, must come to Freshwater Malawi and make a request for a project. Step 4: Community Water Point Committee
Step 5: Funding Step 6: Implementation:
Most of our projects are concentrated in the rural areas surrounding the city of Blantyre, Malawi. Communities in this area are familiar with Freshwater and the work that we do – so they regularly approach us in desperation, to get our assistance with their water and sanitation problems. Freshwater Malawi has found that when the project is community driven, there is a much higher success rate of participation by the community and the facilities are sustainable.
Step 2: Needs Assessment
The Freshwater Malawi team then meets with the village representatives and also consults the local health center and the national office of public health. Freshwater Malawi partners with government public health officials on all projects – helping to determine need, track results and to keep communities informed and educated about hygiene practices. Communication with government health officials helps in many ways: it reduces project duplication; helps to meet the needs of the most needy communities; keeps communications open with the central government that is appreciative of the work of NGOs since they do not tend to allocate a great deal of resources to provide water projects in their country.
Step 3: Community Contribution
After requesting our help, the community must demonstrate its’ commitment to any water or sanitation project. They MUST demonstrate a willingness to supply any materials that they can and also provide all of the unskilled labor that will be required for the project. The contribution from the community will typically include things like manufacturing clay bricks, supplying sand and concrete aggregate, digging any pits required for latrines and other manual tasks.
Community involvement is essential to all water projects facilitated by Freshwater Malawi. All projects have a Water Point Committee that is comprise of at least 60% women. The Water Point Committee is empowered to take charge of the construction, oversight and maintenance of the well/pit latrines – including the collection of donations to buy new parts when necessary.
Freshwater Malawi conducts a participatory rural appraisal with the village development committees and asks them questions such as: What is the problem? What is the solution? How do you think we can go about fixing it? They let the answers come from the community so that the community feels a sense of empowerment and ownership of the project. The communities decide on the technology that is affordable and the materials that can be sourced locally.
Unlike many organizations, Freshwater Malawi team members welcome a challenge from the community – if they feel the project won’t work as planned, they will listen to the community’s recommendations for alterations.
Once the need of the community and their commitment to the project work has been confirmed, Freshwater Malawi deals with funding bodies, on the behalf of that community. Funding may come from other NGOs, grants, and/or individual donors. Freshwater Malawi understands the importance of transparency and accountability in funding and we will go to any lengths to demonstrate the way the organization is operated.
If funding is forth-coming, Freshwater Malawi facilitates the practical implementation of the project.
Step 7: Community Training:
Freshwater Malawi highly values education of the community and they have many different ways to go about it.
They offer classroom workshops for students and communities in hand-washing and hygiene and community-based management (CBM) training for the Water Point Committee.
Step 8: Community Handover and Celebration
The communities take ownership of the facility from project inception to a ceremonial ‘handover’ of the facilities to the community. Once the community has proven their dedication to the project through participation in the Water Point Committee; supplying all the local materials such as gravel, sand and brick; and supplying all the labor (from the entire community, not just the committee); the well “becomes theirs.” When a well finally delivers water for the first time to a community there is a great chorus of cheers and whistles as everyone celebrates this new resource for the community.
Step 9: Follow-up
Freshwater Malawi regularly returns to the communities to check on the wells and latrines. We also keep in touch with the Public Health officials and the local Health Center to monitor illnesses in the area. We developed a tool /form which is used as a check list to monitor the success of the program by determining if the well was installed properly, maintained properly, and if the Water Point Committee was successfully trained and is able to maintain the well (even if members left or died). Ultimately we look at the rate of disease and the attendance of school by the girls – who are burdened with the chore of hauling water from distance sources if there is no well in their village. We also check if hand washing is being practiced all community members.
NGO Partnerships:
Freshwater Malawi also works in partnership with many other NGOs who have an interest in water and sanitation in Malawi. Some of the major groups we work with will be included on the Partners page. These groups sometimes approach Freshwater when they wish to implement water and sanitation projects.
One example of this is an NGO whose main focus in Malawi is to demonstrate farming and agricultural techniques to the subsistence farmers in the area they are concentrating (the Mangochi district in lower-central Malawi). As part of their program they wish to drill some water boreholes – either for drinking water or for irrigation. Since the main interest of this NGO is agriculture, they do not have drilling equipment or personnel who can construct suitable infrastructure for a water point (slab and washing basins). In this situation, they may prefer to obtain the assistance of Freshwater Malawi, in preference to a private contractor – because we offer a more complete service, including community-based management (CBM) training and involvement of the government extension workers, who will ultimately be responsible for ensuring the system can operate well into the future.