Surfaid Sanitation Project

04-Jun-2010

SurfAid International has just completed major clean water projects in two Mentawai sub-villages (dusun) as well as triggering communities in 14 sub-villages in Nias to build 320 latrines.

The ingestion of unsafe water, inadequate availability of water for hygiene, and lack of access to sanitation contribute to about 1.5 million child deaths, and around 88% of death from diarrhea, worldwide each year.

The Mentawai Clean Water Project uses the community-based approach where SurfAid provides material and technical inputs and the community provides the labour with a “gotong royong” (community participation) volunteer system.

SurfAid and the communities installed three wells and two rainwater collection units in Pukarayat and a gravity-fed supply system with pipes in Berkat. The project team will now move on to Gobik and then Naipok, all on the island of Sipora.


Children in Berkat no longer have to travel nearly 1km several times a
day to collect water. Photo: Harry Hill

The head of Berkat village, Osmar Saogo, thanked SurfAid for helping the community build the clean water facilities. “Now our villages have positive changes, whereas beforehand we had to take river water that is quite far away and it’s not clean, and now we have this facility that is also close to our homes. We now have the benefit of these clean water facilities for drinking water, washing our clothes and dishes, and also to bathe.”

SurfAid’s efforts in Nias have been focused on Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS). Communities are encouraged to make an honest assessment of the status of their own community sanitation, with one of the key outcomes being the construction of latrines by individual members of the community.

Diarrhea prevalence is extremely high in Nias, especially in Alasa and Afulu sub-districts, with diarrhea rates of 45% and 35 % respectively, compared with 11% for Indonesia nationally.


SurfAid staff work with the Berkat community to construct water source
protection 450m from the village.

SurfAid Program Director Alan Rogerson said water tanks, clean wells, latrines and septic tanks are the tangible outcomes from the sterling efforts of SurfAid’s field staff working in SurfAid’s partner communities in the Mentawai and Nias.

“But these facilities, and the technical support and training that accompanies them, provide more than the eye can immediately see,” Rogerson said. “There is a direct link between hygiene and health, which is why the provision of improved water quality and sanitation facilities and practices is so important.

“It is especially significant that these facilities were not built for the communities, they were built by the communities. In the Mentawai, our small Clean Water Project team were supported by teams of community members, who provided their labour free of charge.

“In Nias, the household latrines were built as a component of CLTS, which provides technical and logistical support, but no cash subsidies. Individual householders built their own facilities using their own labour and their own resources. It is heartening for SurfAid, and for SurfAid’s supporters, to see these results.”