Project Background
Thank you for the vital role you are playing in transforming the lives of families in Timor-Leste. We're delighted to share a case study from a village in Liquica that demonstrates the life changing difference access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene makes to the lives of children and families.
Kaikasa village is located in Liquica in the sub-district of Maubara. The village has a population of 302 people, including 117 children under the age of 15.
Before this project was undertaken hours were spent collecting water, impacting the health and productivity of the entire community, particularly for women and girls. Having to navigate steep terrain multiple times a day would stop the women and girls from going to school, playing, spending time with their families and partaking in other productive activities.
With most households lacking proper toilets, many people had to go to the bathroom outside, negatively impacting the health of the whole community. Open defecation puts people, especially children, at risk of disease and ill health. The lack of clean, safe water and basic toilets meant diarrhoeal illnesses were common, one of the leading causes of death among children under five years old in Timor-Leste. Women and girls also faced risks to personal safety and dignity not having access to a safe, private toilet.
Project Details
Families in the village came together, along with our staff and local partners, to install a supply of clean water and safe, private sanitation facilities. In this case, due to the mountainous terrain, a gravity water feed was installed to supply water to all households and importantly the local school, health post and Suco (local council).
The new facilities have transformed the village, and made it a much cleaner and safer environment to live. The walk for water that used to take hours out of every day, now takes only minutes.
The local school in particular was affected by lack of reliable water supply. Even though there were toilets at the school around lunchtime students had to spend at least half an hour fetching water from different sources to be able to use the toilets. They were also unhygienic and lacked hand-washing facilities. Now that the pipeline is connected to the school, students can enjoy their lunchtime, wash their hands and prepare their food hygienically.
Hygiene education in both the school and wider community has been a vital component of this project.
Key Project Outcomes
Toilet blocks
All 48 homes in the village constructed their own toilets after being motivated by the community led total sanitation process. Part of this process is to work with the communities to map out the locations of the bushes people use as toilets. That way we demonstrate how much faeces is accumulating in the environment and polluting their water and food. This gives the community an incentive to build their own toilets and be active partners in project implementation, reducing their dependence on external investment.
Drinking water and hand washing facilities
20 public tap stands were constructed throughout the village, at a distance of only 15 metres from their homes. 48 hand washing stations, one per home, were constructed to help prevent the spread of water related diseases, like diarrhoea.
Hygiene education
The community has been taught hygiene practices such as hand washing with soap after going to the toilet, before breastfeeding, and before cooking and eating. This has been particularly important in the local school where hand washing has been incorporated into students’ daily activities.
Gender training
A recent study in Timor-Leste revealed that nearly 96% of girls who dropped out of secondary school cited household chores, such as fetching water, as the primary reason. To try and counteract this, and other issues of gender inequality, we facilitate gender training in every village where we work.
This involves bringing the men and women together to discuss the responsibilities that men and women have in the home. In Kaikasa village this gender training has helped women to make the first steps towards becoming leaders and businesswomen in their community. Women are also active partners in project implementation and maintenance (see featured case study below).
Maintenance
To ensure the long term sustainability of the water tanks, tap stands, toilets and hygiene facilities, the community has developed a water user committee with a clear structure, roles and responsibilities. One of the guidelines is that each house hold pays 25 cents a month into a maintenance fund. The committee will receive training to help them learn how to fix simple problems. We also ensure that half the committee is comprised of women.
A sustainability officer will also return to the village over the next two years to test the quality of the water source and check that the tap stands are in good working order.
Success Story: Guiomar
The hard work of the families in Kaikasa village, along with our staff and local partners, has paid off and they are delighted with the positive impact they have helped bring about in their village.
A major component of the project has been encouraging strong hygiene practices to ensure the long term health benefits to the community. Guiomar is 44 years old and has six children ranging from three to 22 years of age. She is also a member of the local water use committee (GMF).
Before the project Guiomar spent at least an hour and a half each day fetching water – only enough for cooking and drinking. Though her family had a pit latrine, it could not be maintained hygienically due water scarcity. There was also not enough water for hand washing and Guiomar’s children were often sick with diarrhoea.
After the project’s completion Guiomar told us: “Everyone is now using the toilet and keeping it clean and hygienic. My family and children now wash their hands at critical time: after using the toilet, before cooking and before the meal. My children are not sick as often and I have more time to do craft and look after my cassava and banana garden.”
Not only has Guiomar’s day to day life changed for the better with the gift of clean water and sanitation, she is also now a leader in her community. As a member of the local water committee, she has been active in stewarding the implementation of new facilities and is also tasked with maintaining these vital resources.
Can I visit this project?
Not at this time.
The Footprints funding will contribute to the delivery of safe water, sanitation and hygiene to one village in Liquica District.
Project objectives and outcomes
Objective 1: Safe water
Help all community members in one village gain access to a supply of safe, sustainable water through the construction of gravity feed water facilities.
Outcomes:
- A village gains access to improved water supplies free from contamination, thereby reducing the incidence of water related diseases. Money and time spent seeking medical care is therefore saved due to fewer bouts of illness.
- Women and girls’ time spent collecting water is reduced. Time spent on waiting at the water source is also reduced, thereby freeing up more time for productive activities.
- Community members, particularly women and girls are able to spend a greater amount of time attending to other social and economic activities.
- Children are able to stay in school and focus on education when they might otherwise stay home to collect water.
Photo: The simple act of handwashing helps prevent diarrhoea and other diseases, improving overall health. This means happy, healthy kids!
Objective 2: Better sanitation facilities
Help all community members in a village gain access to low cost, low maintenance hygienic toilets through the community led total sanitation approach.
Outcomes for all community members in one village:
- Have access to and regularly use improved toilets rather than resorting to open defecation, resulting in a reduction of infected faecal material being present in the environment.
- Feel a sense of achievement having built a household toilet, and are motivated to maintain it in a hygienic condition.
- Are aware of and practice improved hygiene behaviours, such as hand washing after defecation and before eating or cooking.
Photo: We help shopkeepers set-up spare parts businesses, where community members can purchase spare parts to make small scale repairs to their water systems ensuring ongoing sustainability. (Photo Credit: WaterAid/TomGreenwood)
Objective 3: Maintain better sanitation behaviours
Help all community members in one village to improve their hygienic practices and environmental sanitation, focusing on hand washing at key times, penning animals and reducing places for mosquitoes to breed.
Outcomes:
- Six monthly monitoring visits after project completion report that household toilets are being used and maintained in a hygienic condition (at least 70% of all toilets), and a representative sample of villagers are able to explain the critical times when they should be washing their hands.
Background on current situation in this location or issue
Of the nearly 800,000 people living in rural communities in Timor-Leste, 40% do not have access to a safe water supply, and 63% do not have access to improved sanitation facilities.
In Timor-Leste’s rural communities, the absence of nearby clean water means women and girls can spend up to three hours per day walking long distances to collect water, precluding them from participating in school or other productive activities.
The water sources that are close to communities are often contaminated by human waste, as well as pollutants associated with agricultural run-off and animal husbandry.
In these situations, any development activities aimed at improving female literacy and school completion will fail until these underpinning environmental issues are addressed.
Photo: Imagine if every morning you had to get up at the crack of dawn and walk for miles down uneven paths to the nearest water hole to collect your family's water – water that could pass on deadly diseases to you or your children
Project partners / community involvement
The community is involved in every step of the project starting with the development of a Community Action Plan.
The project seeks to provide significant and on-going support to the community water and sanitation committees (GMF). Practical training and regular mentoring of GMF members aims to ensure that they have the confidence, capacity and community-backing to maintain the water supply systems and conduct repairs when needed.
How this project fits into a larger strategy
The direction for WaterAid’s Timor-Leste country program is documented in the WaterAid in Timor-Leste Country Strategy 2011-2015. The program focuses on the field testing of water, sanitation and hygiene best practice methodologies, then advocating for them to be adopted and implemented at national scales by national governments, donors and other WASH sector actors.
We work in collaboration with other INGOs to increase impact on communities’ livelihood by maximizing the benefit of water, sanitation and hygiene programs. We will continue to work with local NGOs and community groups to harness the local knowledge and increase accountability towards the communities to whom we serve.
We will endeavour to improve planning and monitoring capabilities of government by closely working with local government and line agencies.