Report from South Sudan

Women's Agricultural Project

2011-06-02T17:01:00.000-07:00

The Majok Adim Women's Committee in Ayat East payam, Northern Bahr el Ghazal state, South Sudan, is hard at work implementing ideas for new projects. With support from Pan Aweil Development and financial assistance from Hanti Sidra One Global Family, the women began growing vegetables during the dry season, using drip irrigation. They then sold the produce at a shop they set up in the market at the nearby town of Marial Bai.

Now Pan Aweil Development is helping them start another project. Six oxen, along with ploughs, have been purchased and are being trained to plough the land. A "custom ploughing" business will be set up to prepare the farming plots of some 750 householders in the six villages of Majok Adim boma.

Maluil Primary School Update

2011-06-02T16:44:00.000-07:00

Maluil Primary School in Panhong village, South Sudan, went from being a school under the trees to a school with two new buildings, including 8 classrooms and a staff/resource room, in 2010. Construction work was done by local villagers under the supervision of Pan Aweil Development and with financial support from Hanti Sidra One Global Family, of Canada. The buildings were put to use immediately, although work was not fully completed. In 2011, the work was finished. Concrete floors were done, the inside walls were plastered, the outside walls were painted and waterproofed, and plastic chairs were purchased for the students. Work on boys' and girls' latrines is nearing completion.

Helping Ayuen

2011-06-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

Ayuen Deng is a 10-year-old girl living in the village of Panlang, in South Sudan's Northern Bahr el Ghazal state. She has suffered from lymphatic filariasis, also known as elephantiasis, since infancy. Her right leg is swollen to several times the size of her left leg. With financial help from Hanti Sidra One Global Family in Canada, William Kolong Pioth of Pan Aweil Development was able to take her to the city of Wau for three months early in 2011, where she received treatment at a hospital. Although there is no cure for the disease, she has shown improvement and has returned home. She is now doing household chores, going to the market and attending school.

Benefit Concert for Ayuen

2011-06-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

The Arbutus Singers of Victoria BC presented their annual spring concert in Sidney BC on May 25, 2011. The concert was organized by Hanti Sidra One Global Family, a registered Canadian charity, and funds were used to pay the costs of treatment of Ayuen Deng in South Sudan and to work in the prevention of the spread of elephantiasis.

Stephanie Schroeder of Hanti Sidra hosted the concert.

Jack Boomer is the choir's director and a Vancouver Canucks fan!

William Kolong Pioth of Pan Aweil Development in South Sudan attended the concert.

A long journey ended, birth of a new nation

2011-03-21T19:58:00.001-07:00

As the historic polling kicked off on that bright Sunday morning of January 9th, 2011, I could not help but recall the wise words of two great Southern Sudanese statesmen: the late Dr. John Garang and President Salva Kiir Mayardit. In his speech on January 9th, 2005 during the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), Dr. Garang stated that the CPA: "will change the Sudan forever. Sudan cannot and will never be the same again as this peace agreement will engulf the country in democratic and fundamental transformations…"

This statement was equally echoed by H.E Salva Kiir Mayardit when he repeatedly reassured Southern Sudanese that the CPA was a vehicle without reverse gear. Indeed, as the people of South Sudan cast their ballots on that 9th day of January, 2011, exactly six years after the signing of the CPA, I realized that not only will the Sudan never be the same again but also the CPA has indeed been a vehicle without reverse gear. Despite many challenges faced throughout the interim period, we have successfully reached the decision day during which we, the Southerners, will for the first time have an opportunity to freely decide our destiny.

It has truly been a long time coming for the people of South Sudan to realize their long cherished dream of self identity and nationhood. Indeed, a new nation is now born; congratulations to Southerners for finally joining community of nations. Not many people would believe in 2005 that the referendum would come to pass. However, history has proven such skeptics wrong.

Looking back at South Sudan's dark history, marred with death and destruction, one can only see a whole new meaning in this once-in-a-life-time exercise. The historic exercise has not only been about deciding and forging a new identity, but it has also been about reflecting and remembering millions of brave men and women who laid down their precious lives in the course of the liberation struggle that began in Eastern Equatoria State town of Torit in 1955.

We Southerners owe a lot to our heroes and heroines who paid the ultimate price in the course of the half century long conflict between the North and the South. The only way Southerners could thank these martyrs for their sacrifices was by voting for separation which they overwhelmingly did during the just ended referendum. Just to underscore this point, for example, the people of Aweil Town voted for separation at a rate of 99.75%.

On this historic occasion, therefore, we, the beneficiaries of hard won freedom, feel obliged to pay special tribute to millions of men and women of Southern Sudan who willingly and bravely gave up their dear lives in order to free us from long years of marginalization and oppression.

Finally, I never dreamt that I would live to see this day come to pass, especially after experiencing and surviving the horrors of bush life. The long journey has ended with the birth of a new nation for the people of Southern Sudan and a whole new journey full of uncertainties is just beginning. As we embark on the difficult mission of building a new nation state, let us always remember that our unity is of paramount importance. Together, we shall prevail.

William Kolong Pioth

Aweil Town, South Sudan

Malweil School buildings completed!

2010-06-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

Malweil School does not need to hold classes under the trees any longer. Two buildings with eight classrooms and an office/resource room, were completed at the end of May 2010. After an opening ceremony, the students moved into their new classrooms. This is the first "Bricks for Filters" project to be completed by Pan Aweil Developments Inc., with financial support from Hanti Sidra One Global Family.

Panlang clinic update April 20, 2010

2010-04-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

The Panlang Clinic, another project of Pan Aweil Developments, is officially open and operating very successfully. On March 17, 2010, we held a grand opening ceremony which was attended by hundreds of people who came from all over the surrounding area. The ceremony was attended by government officials including the State Minister of Health, County Commissioner, Members of Parliament, and other dignitaries. The ceremony was joyfully done by the community members who sang and danced all day long. The community chiefs and local MPs expressed their appreciation for the construction of the clinic which is the first of its kind in the area.

We have hired one doctor, three nurses and one security worker. The clinic is currently rendering services to six surrounding communities but people are also coming from farther away. The numbers are almost overwhelming, showing the great need for health care in the area. Now the clinic is being visited daily by 1,500 patients, including a very large number of children. They are coming from as far away as Aweil East County, some traveling for a day to get to the clinic. The small amount of medicine and medical supplies in the clinic, primarily from three medipacks provided by Health Partners International of Canada, is being depleted very quickly.

Official Opening Ceremonies

at the Panlang Clinic

The clinic begins operation

Crowds of patients gather outside

Treatment of patients and dispensing of medicine

Bricks For Filters Update--April 20, 2010

2010-04-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

The Bricks for Filters Project in Aweil West County is progressing very well. The Clean Water Company, operated by Pan Aweil Developments, has been able to manufacture and successfully install 163 biosand water filters into homes in three villages from its production facility in Panlang village. Our target is 200 filters.

The filters are sold to villagers who pay with bricks baked in local village kilns. The villagers have produced enough bricks to build eight classrooms and one teachers' office and storeroom at Malweil Primary School. Until now this school has held classes under the trees.

The Bricks for Filters committees in the community cooperated very well since the start of the project. They made and baked the bricks in addition to loading them at the kiln and unloading them at the school site where the construction is currently ongoing. The community also helped in digging the foundation of the school free of charge. We only paid them food for work for a job that would have cost substantial amounts of money. This was basically because the community is eager to see this school built to completion. The construction of the school has already started and the walls are expected to be completed by late April, 2010. We expect to have the roofing completed by the end of April if everything goes according to plan.

We have also installed a drilled well and hand pump near to the school site.

Biosand water filters:

from manufacture to clean water in homes

Malweil Primary School construction site

Planning and designing

Digging the foundations

Delivering the bricks

Tea break five minutes

Laying the bricks

The walls go up and up

The school well is drilled

Bricks for Filters update--February 2010

2010-02-25T18:36:00.001-08:00

William gives t-shirts from Canada to village children

Children in their t-shirts head toward the new clinic

The Hilux pickup truck promotes clean water

Sand for filters is loaded onto the Hilux, our indispensable "donkey"

New water filters with The Clean Water Company labels

Baked bricks ready to be delivered to the building site

The bricks for the new school building are baked in this kiln

William addresses the Bricks for Filters organizing committee

An outdoor classroom at Malweil Primary School

The Bricks for Filters Pilot Project was officially launched at a community meeting in Panlang village on January 30. The meeting was attended by four paramount chiefs from Panlang/Majok Adim, Marial Bai, Panhong and Wotgiir, the headmaster of Malweil Primary School and 70 members of the local communities who were organized into committees.

The chiefs agreed that their villages would make all the bricks needed for the construction of the new building for Malweil School. The bricks would be used to purchase about 200 biosand water filters made by the production team of The Clean Water Company at their facility in Panlang.

The chiefs also agreed to provide the labour for the construction of the school. The Construction Committee of Volunteers was established and began work making bricks. It was also agreed that village women would form a committee to provide food and water for workers during construction. A youth committee was formed to carry out work such as loading and unloading bricks, construction materials, tools and supplies.

On February 18, William met with the state minister of agriculture to discuss the possibility of the ministry supplying timbers for roofing and other materials at a reduced cost. The minister agreed to provide discounts on all supplies purchased from the ministry.

By mid-February many bricks had already been made and more than 30 water filters had been manufactured and distributed.

According to William, the villagers are very excited about the mutually beneficial project and are looking forward to getting clean water from the filters. They are, he reported, 99% committed to the project. He is, no doubt, working to convince the remaining 1%.

Bricks for Filters

2010-02-25T16:14:00.001-08:00

VILLAGE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

OBJECTIVE

To provide (1) clean drinking water and (2) a primary school or other needed community building at a reasonable cost in partnership with the people of a village in South Sudan.

BACKGROUND

The people of South Sudan are in the early stages of recovery from decades of war with northern Sudan. Millions of people were killed or displaced from their homes and many villages were completely destroyed. Northern Bahr el Ghazal (NBG) is a frontline state located on the border with northern Sudan. According to a recent report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), (State Report Northern Bahr el Ghazal, Village Assessments and Returnee Monitoring, 2009) more than half of the population of about 800,000 are returning refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs).

A survey of villagers by IOM in nearly all of the state’s 1,800 villages identified a lack of access to water, especially improved drinking water, as the greatest need. Lack of access to health care was rated the second greatest concern and education was third.

Mindful of the needs as identified by the people themselves, Hanti Sidra One Global Family is concentrating on supporting the development efforts of villages in those top priority areas through our South Sudanese NGO partner, Pan Aweil Developments Inc. (PADI). Its first projects, launched or completed in 2009, were a drilled well and a clinic in Panlang village, Aweil West county, and a project to produce and distribute biosand water filters through our entity Piu Path Nyin--The Clean Water Company, based in Aweil, the capital of NBG state.

PROJECT OUTLINE

We strongly believe that any village-based development project cannot succeed unless it has strong support and active participation of the people in the village. They must “take ownership” of the project and the process of implementing it. The first projects of PADI demonstrated this. The location of the well and clinic were determined by village leaders and villagers made the bricks and provided voluntary labor for the construction of the clinic. The building was completed in just over six months at a cost of $25,000. While this construction project was very successful, we believe, based on our analysis of the process, that we can do even better. A pilot project, to be implemented in 2010, will combine elements of all our activities and interests into one comprehensive community development that we hope will serve as a model that can be replicated in other villages.

The essence of the project is as follows:

Approximately 200 biosand water filters will be manufactured and installed in households in a village. This will help villagers to attain their top priority--purified drinking water. The filters will be sold, not given to villagers, since they will then be much more likely to be valued and used properly. The cost per filter sold in bulk is 150 Sudanese pounds ($60US). Since most villagers are subsistence farmers with minimal access to cash, they will be able to purchase the filters by barter, using a commodity they can produce--bricks manufactured in their own village kilns. One filter will cost approximately 600 bricks.

Householders (primarily women) and school children will receive education on use and maintenance of the filters (very simple) and general hygiene and sanitation from a team of trained community health workers.

The bricks will be used to construct a building that can be used for the benefit of the village--it could be a school, a clinic, or a multipurpose community centre. In the case of this pilot project, it will be an 8-room primary school building in Ayat East payam (district), some 5 km south of the town of Marial Bai.

The villagers in the area do not need to be convinced of the need for a primary school or organized to create the infrastructure to operate a school. Malweil Primary School already exists and it is well organized and well run. It has a teaching staff and about 200 students. The main problem is that, like many schools in NBG and other states, classes are held under trees. During the rainy season, classes are frequently cancelled. The school administrators and villagers are highly motivated to have a school building.

PADI's involvement will be: (1) to supervise construction of the building; (2) to engage some skilled local workers, such as an architect, building contractor and roofing contractor; and (3) to provide building materials such as roofing sheets, timbers, cement, possibly steel doors and windows and paint. The villagers will provide labor, bricks, sand and mud (for mortar) and food for workers. Once the building is completed, it will be turned over to the village and the existing Malweil Primary School to be administered and maintained by them.

We believe PADI can complete the construction of an 8-classroom school, plus boys’ and girls’ latrines, a staff/resource room (traditional tukul design) and a drilled well at a very reasonable cost in a period of less than one year.

PADI will then offer its expertise to do similar projects on a turnkey basis. They will require a partnership between (1) highly motivated villagers eager to be involved in project planning and to provide voluntary labor and locally available resources and (2) an NGO, government agency or other financial backer. The exact cost will vary depending on the size of the building, the location of the village and access to building materials, and fluctuation in prices of commodities such as cement and sheet metal. PADI will guarantee the lowest possible price and quickest completion time, given these constraints.

Pan Aweil projects 2010

2010-02-25T15:03:00.001-08:00

Logo for the water filter project

Village women prepare seedbeds next to the clinic building

Village children get water at the clinic well

Our South Sudanese partner now has a formal legal structure in the country. William Kolong Pioth, its Managing Director, is a Sudanese Canadian who divides his time between two homes, Vancouver and Aweil. When he arrived in South Sudan in January for his most recent stay there, he went to the capital city, Juba, to arrange for the legal incorporation of the organization as a non-profit corporation called Pan Aweil Developments Inc.

The purposes of the organization, as stated in its articles of association are:

(1) To initiate, supervise and manage the development of small scale community projects in South Sudan, primarily in the areas of clean water supply, health care, education and agriculture.

(2) To maximize the participation of local people in the development and management of projects in their communities.

(3) To inform and educate local people in areas such as hygiene, sanitation, personal and family health care, food production and preparation, building construction and skills development.

(4) To provide project development consultancy services to other non-profit organizations.

(5) To attract and channel funding from domestic and international sources to projects and activities of the corporation.

(6) To strive to ensure that projects developed by the corporation become self-supporting within a reasonable period of time.

Pan Aweil Developments is now managing two projects that were begun in 2009. The first is the Pioth Thuc Guot Walk-In Clinic, located in Panlang village, just outside the town of Marial Bai in Aweil West County, Northern Bahr el Ghazal state, South Sudan.

Construction of the four-room clinic and a nearby drilled well were completed in 2009. Local villagers supplied the bricks and labour for the clinic building and a local contractor from Aweil town installed the well. Hanti Sidra One Global Family provided funding for the construction of the clinic and well, and purchased medical supplies for the clinic from Health Partners International, a Canadian NGO. Other medical equipment was donated by doctors in Burnaby BC.

Even before the clinic began operation, the building was being put to use by the community. A nearby primary school that, like many in South Sudan, has “classrooms” under trees, moved its classes under the broad roof of the clinic’s verandah on rainy days. In addition, community meetings were held on the verandah. The nearby well and another one installed by William about a half kilometre away are getting plenty of use by grateful villagers. Also, right next to the clinic building there is a small agricultural project. Village women have a nursery where they plant seedlings watered from the nearby well, then transplant them to their own fields. As this is being written, the management of the clinic is still in the process of being organized but its official opening is coming soon and it should be fully operational shortly.

The second project of Pan Aweil Developments is called The Clean Water Company. It manufactures and distributes biosand water filters. Clean drinking water was identified by villagers as their most critical need, with access to health care ranking second. The filters, designed in the early 1990s by David Manz, then an engineering professor at the University of Calgary, seem to be the perfect solution and they are now used widely throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST), based in Calgary, provides training, technical support, and research for the development of the filters. These concrete filters, with precise proportions of sand and gravel as the filtration media, are relatively easy to build and maintain. They eliminate 100% of parasites and over 95% of bacteria from water, as well as almost all suspended sediments and most organic and inorganic compounds. They are ideal for home use, providing about 60 litres of pure water per day. The Clean Water Company’s first production facility is now in operation in Panlang village, near to the clinic and well.

A third project that is a combination of, and spin off from, the first two is called “Bricks for Filters”. It is described in a separate post. In addition, Pan Aweil Developments is already receiving inquiries from a number of South Sudanese and external NGOs regarding management or consultancy services. For the moment it is concentrating on getting its initial projects up and running satisfactorily.

Three projects started in 2009

2010-01-13T21:30:00.000-08:00

Trainees remove a concrete water filter from the mold.

Dr. Simon Kuot and staff of our new clinic
unpack medical supplies from Canada.

A well, a clinic, water filters--all in one year

In 2009, we began to support several small projects in South Sudan, a semi-autonomous region that signed a peace agreement with the Khartoum-based government in 2005. Our contact there is William Kolong Pioth, a Sudanese Canadian from Vancouver with a strong commitment to help his people both in Canada and South Sudan. William is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan, made famous in numerous films, documentaries and a best-selling book called What Is the What. The book is based on the experiences of another Lost Boy, William's friend Valentino Achak Deng. Achak is using proceeds from the book to build a secondary school in his home village of Marial Bai, also William's home.

During the year, we supported projects to install a well and build a clinic in Marial Bai. By the end of 2009, a doctor and other staff had been hired and we had sent medical kits filled with drugs and supplies. Early in 2010 the clinic will begin operation.

Another project is the manufacture and distribution of biosand water filters. These low-cost filters are easy to build and maintain, and are intended to be used in homes to provide villagers with safe drinking and cooking water.

In May we sent three trainees to a facility in Kampala, Uganda to learn how to build and install the filters. We also purchased two steel molds and various tools for our own production centre in South Sudan. In September we sponsored two training workshops in Aweil, the capital of Northern Bahr el Ghazal state. Conducted by experts from Canada and Zambia, a workshop on building biosand filters was attended by 17 participants. The second workshop, attended by 46 participants, focused on hygiene and sanitation. The filter project is set to begin production early in 2010.

During the year, William spent eight months working on these projects. Dennis visited in February and again in August.