Water For Life Program: Using Biosand filters to save lives
Location
Initiate and facilitate community managed biosand filter program to provide affordable clean drinking water at the household level in poverty stricken areas of rural India.
About You
Location
Project Street Address
Project City
Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Your idea
Field of Work
Water
Year the initative began (yyyy)
2006
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Web site (url)
Positioning of your initiative on the mosaic diagram:
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Limited focus on long-term impact
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Increase accountability through design for the long-term
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic
When considering the health of communities one cannot underestimate the importance and influence of the local water supply. Water is critical to life yet several factors besides its availability must be taken into consideration in order to fully understand and protect this vital resource, which is intrinsically linked to public health. These factors include water quality (source suitability), accessibility, use (resource allocation), and conservation. Furthermore, the 1978 Alma Ata Conference on Primary Health Care identified the provision of a safe and adequate water supply as being one of the eight fundamental components of primary health care.
A major goal of the Water For Life Program is to work with village communities to set up sustainable, locally-managed water and sanitation surveillance activities that will be used to assess and make any necessary improvements or changes in local infrastructure and behaviors in order to reduce morbidity from water-borne diseases. This will be conducted in conjunction with the Biosand filter promotion activities. The viability of using and promoting Biosand filtration technology at the household level becomes all the more promising when considering the diverse conditions under which these filters have been effectively used and tested by a number of governments, NGOs and academic institutions. Tens of thousands of filters in over 30 countries throughout Latin America, Africa, South and Southeast Asia have shown the ability of this technology to adapt to a variety of environmental as well as social conditions to improve the health of communities. Given the encouraging results of the filter under laboratory as well as field conditions in India and other countries as well as locally administered pilot studies, CRHP expects this program to be highly successful at impacting public health.
Name Your Project
Water For Life Program: Using Biosand filters to save lives
Describe Your Idea
Initiate and facilitate community managed biosand filter program to provide affordable clean drinking water at the household level in poverty stricken areas of rural India.
Innovation
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
Initiate and facilitate community managed biosand filter program to provide affordable clean drinking water at the household level in poverty stricken areas of rural India.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field?
The Water For Life Program, administered under CRHP, will facilitate and enable poverty stricken communities to set up local Biosand filter production and distribution networks so as to ensure the availability of affordable safe drinking water in every household. Already relying upon such water purification methods as boiling, chlorination and moringa seeds, to varying extents, the village communities, working in partnership with CRHP, will be able to utilize these intermittent slow-sand filters as an appropriate and cost-effective technology that will be sustainable in the long term with little or no outside input. The local production and distribution of these filters will also boost the local economy by serving as an effective income generating program. The high incidence of diseases such as diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid, and hepatitis A, especially during the monsoon months are placing a heavy burden upon the poor. Education and training, emphasizing environmental awareness, hygiene and sanitation, will be key aspects of this program.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
The current operational model of CRHP enables a highly efficient and open flow of information and resources from the health centre to the communities and from professionals to grassroots workers. The program will be flexible, responding to the stated needs and wishes of the target population, and implementation will be conducted primarily by the people themselves so as to encourage local ownership of the program. Training in all aspects of biosand filter operation and production will be provided by CRHP.
How do you plan to expand your innovation?
Locally based expansion will include an increase in the number of project villages and the scope of current programs as well as initiating new ones in response to changing health and socioeconomic conditions in the villages. The Water For Life Program will be one of these new initiatives. We anticipate that this program will eventually become self-propagating as it has in many parts of the world, requiring minimal input from CRHP. A greater focus will be placed on the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases that are becoming more common. Expansion of the training institute will also take place to accommodate a growing national and international interest in our model.
Do you have any existing partnerships, and if so, how do you create them?
Since its founding CRHP has engaged in key operational partnerships, which made it financially and technically possible to undertake a large number of vital activities such as the drilling of over 250 tubewells to provide the villages with an adequate quantity and quality of drinking water. These partnerships have included Oxfam, United Methodist Church, and Churches Auxiliary for Social Action in the past and currently Lutheran World Relief, Tearfund, American Leprosy Mission, and the Sisters of Notre Dame, Holland.
State and central government partnerships have made it possible to spread the community-based approach to health and development throughout India. This is achieved via residential and mobile training of grassroots workers, officials, administrators, and health professionals. Government partnerships have also provided a forum in which to advocate for the rights of the poor and marginalized. This is done through the current participation of Dr. Raj Arole on the National Rural Health Mission, chaired by the Prime Minister, as well as past involvement on various state and national health policy making bodies.
The Aroles have been recognized by the Schwab Foundation, part of the World Economic Forum, as social entrepreneurs. Membership in the Schwab Foundation provides access to strategic partnerships with leading business and government organizations that are interested in social investment. This also provides a valuable platform for exchanging ideas
Impact
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact.
we hope to promote and share a cost-effective and scalable approach to health and development through the use of innovative community-based strategies.
What are the main barriers to creating or achieving your impact?
Startup funding has been difficult to secure.
How many people have you served or plan to serve?
The effectiveness of CRHP as whole can be explained largely by its unique approach to health and development work. Integrating diverse fields such as agriculture and the environment (including water and sanitation), social work, health education and literacy, preventive and primary health along with traditional medical care, CRHP has been able to modify the root causes of poverty and ill health in a sustainable and culturally appropriate way. The project has always worked under the premise that meaningful change can only occur from within and thus it is necessary to instill a strong sense of ownership in the community for all development activities. This model, having been refined over the past 36 years of direct work at the grassroots, has proven itself to be incredibly powerful at improving not only the health conditions within poor communities but also at modifying long-held sociocultural practices such as the caste system and the low status of women. Direct impact: ~500,000
Directly
Number of clients in the last year? CRHP is currently working with a rural population of about 100,000 scattered throughout the state of Maharashtra. These include tribal villages who are among the poorest and most marginalized groups in India.
The training centre, operated by CRHP, has received about 1,500 trainees over the past year. These people come from India and over a hundred other countries to get exposure in the field of health and development and to learn more about our model and its applicability in other areas. Our training institute offers short courses for exposure as well as certification and diploma courses in community-based health and development.
Indirectly
Through training (residential and mobile) and consulting: >2 million.
Please list any other measures of the impact of your innovation?
Significant reductions in the infant mortality rate, malnutrition, crude birth rate, maternal mortality, rates of prevalent diseases (e.g. tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria, HIV/AIDS, diarrheal diseases), increase in the vaccination rate and the use of family planning services (both temporary and permanent methods).
Is there a policy intervention element to your innovation, if so please describe?
Over the next 3 years CRHP will focus on consolidating our activities with the SERP (Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty) project in the state of Andhra Pradesh through mobile and residential training of staff at all levels of health and development work. At the request of the state government CRHP will expand work in the tribal areas of Maharashtra through training of Ashram boarding school teachers and setting up community-based programs to empower tribals and develop villages. Advocating for health policy reform through the National Rural Health Mission will continue due to Dr. Raj Arole’s representation of India’s NGO sector.
Locally based expansion will include an increase in the number of project villages and the scope of current programs as well as initiating new ones in response to changing health and socioeconomic conditions in the villages.
Exactly who are the beneficiaries of your innovation?
The beneficiaries will be members of the village communities with which CRHP is partnered. We especially target vulnerable groups and families with the villages, including women, children the lower caste population and victims of violence and disease. Poverty is still wide spread in this part of India with many earning under $2/day.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
CRHP aims to enable communities to achieve sustainable holistic development in which local resources are developed, maximized and used to their fullest potential. Financial reliance upon an outside organization is counterintuitive to achieving this goal. Experience has shown that when communities invest a substantial amount of their own time and resources into health and development activities a much greater sense of ownership and pride develops. The results of this approach have been very positive with communities showing significant interest and commitment to PHC activities long after CRHP reduces its presence.
In the Water For Life Program, households will be charged a fee for each filter based on a sliding scale. The very poor will receive the filters with heavy subsidization when necessary.
Provide information on your finances and organization:
What is your annual operating budget? USD$500,000
What are your current sources of revenue? (please list any sources that are foundation grants) Japanese Evangelical Lutheran Association (JELA), Lutheran World Relief (LWR), Tearfund, American Leprosy Mission (ALM), and the Sisters of Notre Dame, Holland. In addition we receive funding from individual donors and philanthropists throughout the world.
What is the potential demand for your innovation?
With regard to the Water For Life Program the demand has been high. Water tends to be a priority for people in many of our project areas. As a result of our primary health and education activities people now realize the importance of having a safe water supply and are willing to invest time and resources in novel solutions to procure it. Through our facilitation and guidance this need can be met in a relatively short period of time.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability?
The effort to meet operating costs while attempting to expand and further develop community-based health programs is an ongoing challenge. Achieving full financial sustainability in an organization geared towards working with the poorest and most marginalized groups in society is impossible without alienating those same groups. Other activities undertaken through the joint partnership of CRHP with its project communities (e.g. drilling tubewells, watershed development) require a monetary investment often beyond the scope of the villages’ capacity.
The Story
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
CRHP was founded by Drs Raj and his late wife Mabelle Arole, who committed themselves to serving and uplifting India’s rural poor and marginalized population. The Aroles graduated from CMC Vellore and obtained their residency training in medicine and surgery and masters of public health in the U.S. While in the US they planned a project that would effectively meet the immediate and long term needs of the poor and marginalized, especially women, by working in partnership with the village communities. In 1970 Drs Raj and Mabelle Arole returned to India to implement this project. After visiting villages and holding open discussions with people to see where community cooperation and participatory development would be most welcome they decided to work in the areas surrounding Jamkhed in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra.
Among the many awards won by the Aroles was the Magsaysay in 1979.
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