Bricks for Filters update--February 2010

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

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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

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

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.