Build a running water system for 40 households in Minzhu Village, the middle school in Rdo Sbis and the primary schools in Rdo Sbis Township. This will improve villagers’ living conditions, reduce the heavy burden on women, and increase the students’ leisure time that has been spent on fetching water.

The Shambala Connection funded this project

Limao Cairang is from Xunhua County, Haidong Region, Qinghai Province, China. She is currently working towards an associated degree in English at the Qinghai Normal University Nationalities Department English Training Program

What? Build a running water system for 40 households in Minzhu Village, the middle school in Rdo Sbis and the primary schools in Rdo Sbis Township. This will improve villagers’ living conditions, reduce the heavy burden on women, and increase the students’ leisure time that has been spent on fetching water.

Who? Minzhu Village, Rdo Sbis Township, Xunhua County, Haidong region, Qinghai Province, China.

Photos of project implementation

The villagers were waiting for the others to finish the last part of digging

This is the ditch that the villagers dig.

The pipe, steel and cement were transported to this woman’s house, and she (Lhago) was one of the project committees responsible for taking care of the materials.

Every household in Minzhu Village had a water tap, just like the ones above. I realized that all of them had placed a kadang around the tap as a sign of appreciation.

The brothers were happy to take water from the newly built water supply.

The old woman (Lumojia) was testing whether the water supply was working.

Ani Gongboji was trying to get water with the buckets from her new water tap.

This is the water supply set up at the school but because the pictures were taken on the weekend none of the students were there.

After the village leader told the villagers the water supply was now working, the little girl ran to get buckets to fetch some water.

This man is the previous leader. Here he was testing the black pipe which will be used for winter, because the iron one will be frozen during that time.

This woman (Dorlka) was very shy to get a picture even though I asked her many time. when I was leaving she told me to send her appreciation to the kind people in the Shambala connection.

Project summary

Project title
Running Water Project for Minzhu Village.

Project goals
Build a running water system for 40 households in Minzhu Village, the middle school in Rdo Sbis and the primary schools in Rdo Sbis Township. This will improve villagers’ living conditions, reduce the heavy burden on women, and increase the students’ leisure time that has been spent on fetching water.

Location of project
This project is located in Minzhu Village, Rdo Sbis Township, Xunhua County, Haidong Region, Qinghai Province,China. It is located southeast of Xining, which is about 170 kilometers from Xining, the capital city of Qinghai Province.

Total beneficiaries
This running water project will benefit approximately 1,300 people, including the people in Minzhu Village (170 people) and the students in both schools (990 students). Also the people who are living beside the village (about 200 people)-restaurant and shop owners will benefit because the village is located beside the Township and they all are using the water tap that our village is using.

Implementation organization/individual
Lumo Tsering (Corrine), Rdo Sbis township leader Zhou jia, and Shem Women’s group.

Contact Group:Shem Women’s Group

Funds received: Source, Amount, and Date Received
The Shem Group gave 97,640 RMB on June 25th, 2007 to the project manager ( Lumo Tsering).

Details of project activities
Originally planned project activities
1)Discuss the problems of accessing water with the villagers, and decide what can be done to alleviate these problems. (Done)
2)Talk with village leader about the community’s most essential needs and how the water problem can be solved. (Done)
3)Collect information about and for the project. (Done)
4)Get official permission to carry out the project from our county leader. the leader has already asked us to rebuild the pipe system last year, but because of lack of money our village still didn’t do it.
5)Talk to other project managers and workers who have experience working on this type of project. Discuss with them about what kinds of materials are needed. (Done)
6)Figure out the price of materials in Xunhua County. (Done)
7)Hold a meeting with villagers and ask three women and two men to be responsible for the materials, to supervise the condition of the water spring and ditch system. one woman will take care of the materials, one woman and one man are in charge of the spring, and the other man and woman are responsible for the water ditch. (Done)
8)A skilled worker called Tselo who had done this kind of project in other villages studies the ground to find out the best place where the new water system should be built. (Done)
9)Take pictures of the current local conditions. (Done)
10)Write project proposal. (Done)
11)Funds are received.
12)Hold a meeting with the villagers to discuss the start date of the project.
13)Meet the contractors, Jiaobatai and Naizhi, to arrange when and how the villagers will prepare the sand and stones, and also the ditch where the pipe goes.
14) Purchase materials such as cement and bricks from Xunhua County and have the five responsible villagers begin overseeing the project construction.
15)Oversee the participation of the villagers until the project is completed.
16)Interview the villagers to gage the success of the project.
17)Take pictures of the project after its completion.
18)Send final report to donor.

Activities realized in the framework of the project
1)In August the proposal was designed and the information related to the running water project was collected.
2)In August a meeting was held with Minzhu Villagers to choose the project committees. the committees went together to decide the location of the water box and where the ditch should be constructed.
3)In September the proposal was completed.
4)The project was funded by the Shambala Connection.
5)Lumo Tsering (the project manager) received 97,640 RMB from Shem Women’s Group on 25th June 2007. the project manager contacted the Township government and the villagers to discuss when the project could start. at that time, we found out that most of the available workers were out to earn money.
6)On July 15th 2007, Lumo Tsering contacted the Township leader to discuss the implementation time of the project and decided to wait until the summer holiday to do the project, because the government was also planning to do a water project for the whole township and if it happened then Lumo Tsering could save some of the project money to do other project.
7)On August 2nd, Lumo Tsering went home again and held a meeting with the villagers and decided to start the project on August 20th, which is just after harvest.
8)On August 3rd, Lumo Tsering held a meeting with the project committee, and told them to take responsibilities for the materials and solve any problems that could happen during the project implementation.
9)On September 1st the water box was dug, and the pipes, steel, and cement that are needed for the water box were transported to Minzhu Village. a skill man called Dangzen taught them how to use the pipe connections and other stuff.
10)On September 9th, other materials were transported to Minzhu Village.
11)From September 10th, villagers started to dig the ditch.
12)On September 30th, villagers finished digging and photos were taken after that
13)From October to November, the villagers participated in government’s water project which is for the whole Township included the hospital, police station, township government and other institutions in the township and we did not able work on our own project until November 5th 2007.
14)From November 5th 2007, the villagers started to work on water box.
15)On November 9th 2007, the running water project was completed and each household got running water system in their yard and started to use.
16)On November 10th 2007, the project manager (Lumo Tsering) interviewed the villagers and took some pictures.
17)On November 1st 2007, Lumo Tsering started to work on the final report.

Detailed budget

Notes:

I’ve received 97,640rmb from Shem on June 25th, and plus local contribution the project total cost is 117,044 rmb,so I need to return 1,396 rmb to the Shambala connection.

Note #1 the amount of cement we planed to buy was used on the water box and we needs cement on the small water box in each households. So totally I brought 15 Ton of cement.

Note #2 we brought extra 3000 bricks for the schools, because their water box needed to be little bit bigger than the villagers.

Note #3 when the villagers were digging the water box, they thought it was not necessary to have very big water box, so we only need 15 slabs for the box. And the amount of money for 5 slabs was saved.
Note #4 This black pipe is used for the winter, because the white pipe is not useable in the winter since water got frozen in the white pipe. So I brought black for each household and total cost was 550 RMB.

Note #5 for the black pipe we also need tap and then I brought extra 40 taps for black pipes and which cost 20 RMB for total.
Note #6 After the road was paved the ditch was dug beside the path and become twist and we need more connections to the pipes. Also each household got three valves inside their small water box for security, if something happened to the big valves, and then there are still other two small valves to control the water. So I had to buy more of those materials which are much needed.

Note #7 This machine was used for connect the plastic connections, and without this we can’t connect the plastic connections so I had to buy this which was not in the original budget.
Note #8 Before the project manager planned to buy the materials in Lanzhou city which is the capital city of Gansu province, because things are cheaper there. but while I was implementing the project i brought materials in both Xining and Linxia, due to the reason that the material price in Lanzhou went up. After I calculated, I found out that by using same amount of money of the transportation fee to Lanzhou I can buy the things here in Xining and Linxia with the same quality. Also it would take at least four days to purchase the metals from Lanzhou. Also, in Xunhua (My hometown) there were also some new settled companies where we could get the good-quality materials with free transportation fee. more than that, I got the materials from Linxia freely, because one of my relatives was also going there for business and he took the materials in his truck. And also we only paid half of the transportation fee from Linxia to Minzhu village, because one man from another village was going there to buy coal. for all of these reasons the project manager saved lots of transportation fee.
Note #9 Before the villagers said that they know how to make water box, but later they were not confidant about the construction and then the project manager hired one skilled man and paid 500rmb for designing water box.

Note #10 Shem paid 500 rmb as project management payment.

Delays, Difficulties, and lessons learned
Delays
The starting date for the project was delayed for several reasons. Firstly, there were not enough people to start working on the project because all of the available workers in the village were away. secondly, the government was also planning to do a similar project on the village, and following people’s advice I planed on doing the project together with the government in order to save some money to do other project, so the implementation was pushed until the summer vacation. Thirdly, after finding that the government project was not going to happen, then I decided to do it by myself. by that time harvest had already started so we waited until it was over.
There were also delays in the completion of the project. Firstly, due to weather conditions people were unable to work. secondly, as I mentioned above the villagers participated in government’s water project which is for the whole Township, included the hospital, police station, township government, institutions and the other villages around the township, for almost one month and ten days and this hold up our project for a long time. the reason why all the villagers participated in this work is that this water project is for the whole township, and the township government required the villages all around the township to do the labor work, ditch digging. if they don’t participate in the labor work, then every household needed to pay certain amount of money to the government. however, the villagers didn’t want to pay money and instead they participated in the work which was to dig ditch from a big spring that is 20 kilometers away from the village. that is one reason why the implementation time was delayed. another reason was because the spring which the government planned to use is big spring which is enough for the whole Township, so the villagers from Minzhu Village also thought it would be useful for them in the future if the government allow them to just connect their water pipes with the government’s pipe. Even though the ditch for the government project was dug, the materials are still not arrived and it is not completed. however, our project was successfully completed and now Minzhu villagers, the two schools and some other villagers are having running water in their own yard.
Difficulties
During the implementation, the most serious problem which I encountered was that the vendor miscalculated the size of the pipe, providing one which was a little bit smaller than what was required. we realized about this soon after the villagers had placed the pipe into the ditch. Then we found that the pipe size and the connections were not matching. Solving this problem took us about three days, delaying some other activities.

Beside this, the time on which the implementation took place happened to be right during school time so I could only purchase the materials and transport them home during the weekend, so sometimes I would feel very tired doing both work and study. In addition, since I could only be there for the weekend, I could not take some important pictures of the project and village people didn’t have cameras.

Also, before the implementation of the project, I asked the government leader whether they would do the water project, but they said that they couldn’t because they have some financial problems. however, when my project was about to finish, the government started their project and also ordered the villagers to participate in the work. So the villager’s only option was to delay my project since the government charge money if they don’t participate. for this reason my project was delayed for almost one month.

Lessons learned
During the implementing of the running water project, one thing which I learned was that one needs to be ready to convince and negotiate with others. Communication is the key to come to terms with others, especially when disagreements and conflicts among people arise. I learnt that when we are implementing a project any unexpected things can happen and one needs to be ready to solve it and take decisions. for example, when only one water box was left to complete the project, some villagers started to leave to participate on a government work, delaying the completion of project for a long time. So I had to talk to them and convince them of the importance of finishing the project on time, especially toward our donor who had given its support and expected to see this project finished on time. This proved to be successful as the villagers promised to continue the work until it was finished.
During the project, I also learned about the importance of cooperation. not only among village people, whose teamwork was so important for the project, but also between the village, Shem group, the Shambala connection and I, whose cooperation and involvement has been determinant for the success of the project.
I also learnt that sometime we needed to be flexible and creative. for example after one month of government project implementation, I held a meeting with the villagers to explain the importance of finishing the project on time, and how long we already delayed. Also on the meeting I told them if they could not finish the project as soon as possible, the Donor might be upset and may asked them to return money back. So after five days of this meeting, I received phone call from them that they finished project implementation.

Interviews
1)

Ake Naizhi

He is a sixty-nine years old Tibetan. there are eight members in his family. he said that before the project was done, they had asked the government many time for doing the water project but due to financial problems they could not do it. but now all the things that were needed for the project could be transported without any difficulty, and now they all have their own water supply in their households. he thought that in his lifetime he would never be able to access water from his own house, but he is very happy that he can get water in the house and that this will be available for next generations. he also said that having water in the house was like having a good daughter-in-law for the family. at the end of the conversation he told me that even though he knew no one in Shambala Connection, he asked me to invite people from the organization to come to the village where they will always be welcome.

2)

Ake Naizhi’s grandchildren

They are Ake Naizhi’s grandchildren. Before they would help to irrigate the plants and take water for livestock. I asked them what they thought about the water they got in the house and they said that from now on they would no longer need to fetch water, so they were very happy.

3)

Drolker

She is thirty-six years old now. She said that since she got backache five years ago her daughter is the one who does the work of fetching water. She also said that whenever she would see her daughter carrying the heavy buckets on her small shoulder, she would feel guilty for making the children fetch water, but she did not have choice. however, after getting water in the house, her daughter doesn’t need to go fetch water anymore. She appreciates so much the help from the Shambala Connection.

4)

Lumojya

Lumojya is the women wearing the Tibetan robe, standing beside Ake Naizhi who is wearing a black hat. She is in her fifties and when I entered the house she was holding the white Kadang in her hand and waiting for me because she heard that I was coming to take pictures. As soon as I entered the house she offered me the white Kadang and said thanks again and again. She said that since she couldn’t offer Kadang to the Shambala members, she would offer it to me to show how thankful she is. She told me that she will always remember the kindness of Shambala connection and will chant Mani to wish for them a wonderful life.

Letter of appreciation

The translation of village’s thanks Letter

Dear the Shambala Connection,

I am the leader of Minzhu Village, from where we received your help.

Before, even though we had drinking water, it was not available and was very inconvenient. So, fetching water was a hard burden for villagers. Since our village condition is very bad we could not build a good water system for ourselves. Fortunately, you helped us and every household now has running water and the whole village is very happy.

So in the name of the entire village I would like to thank you. all the villagers will never forget your kindness and will always chant Mani for you. Tashi Delek! (Good luck!)

Minzhu Village leader

The translation of school’s thanks Letter
dear the Shambala Connection,

Xunhua Middle School was established in February 11 1942. the whole school has an area of about 19,950.18 square meters and the school building occupies an area of 4,241.05 square meters. This is the biggest boarding school in Rdo Sbis Township. Now, there are 36 employees and 32 eligible teachers. we have 11 classes which majors in both Tibetan and Chinese. there are 460 students in this school and the female student population is 203. About 250 students are living in the school. the school got lots of awards both from the county and the province, so it has great reputation in the local area.
However, the school has water problems like all the neighboring villages. for different reasons the water problems hadn’t been solved for many years. This problem made things like school management, maintenance and dorm room sanitation difficult and made things inconvenient for both the students and the teachers. Luckily, you helped us to supply water to our school yard and solved the problems existing in the school for which we feel very grateful. With your support we will try our best to improve our education system and will bring up people with ability for the promotion of the economy.
Finally, in the name of the 500 teachers and students and the Township people I would like to thank the Shambala Connection. we will never forget your kindness and will not disappoint you. Under your help the students will study even harder to get knowledge and the teachers will try their best to improve their teaching. all of us will do our best to develop the education.

Xunhua Rdo Sbis Middle school

School Leader Li Jia Dongzhi

CHECK THE RECEIPT NUMBERS

Receipt # 1

Receipt 8

Receipt 9

Original proposal

Project location
Huadi Village (called Minzhu in Chinese) is the neighbor of Rdo Sbis Township, which is about 30 kilometers from Xunhua County Town in the southwest of Xunhua County. Xunhua is situated in Haidong Region, Qinghai Province, China. Huadi village is one of a few small villages that together make up a big village called Gule. the other small villages are Shang Gule and Xia Gule. all the people in this area are Tibetan.

Population
there are approximately 170 people in Huadi village. there are 65 women and 61 men. 44 children make up the rest of the village population.

Education
In this village ten percent of the people are literate (not including students). nine out of this ten percent of literate villagers are older men. these men were monks when they were young and learned how to write and read Tibetan at the monastery. Now they have wives and families of their own. In the village there are seven university students, six high school students, six middle school students and ten primary school students. there are about 20 school-aged children in the village. on average, one child in each family currently attends school. Some families do not want to send their children to school. they think it is a waste of money and time, as their children will not be able to find a job in the future, so they take their children with them to earn money.

Cash Income
all of the villagers in Huadi village are farmers who grow barley, wheat and potatoes on their land. Rich families who own eight mu (1 mu = 0.0666 hectares) can sell their excess barley and earn about 800 RMB each year. however, most families only have one or two mu of land, which is only enough for them to live off of, and certainly not enough for them to make extra income.

A second way that villagers earn money is from livestock, as each family usually owns one cow. from the cow’s milk, villagers produce butter and cheese to generate extra income. Because people do not eat butter or cheese very often, most of it can be sold. a family can earn about 600-800 RMB per year by selling butter and cheese. Most households can make about 25 to 30 jin (12-15 kgm) of butter and 30 jin (15 kgm) of cheese each year.

The third way of generating cash income is as migrant laborers. Adults who are able to work do this. they usually dig caterpillar fungus, which is very difficult to find. each caterpillar fungus can sell for around 10 to15 RMB. People usually go to dig the fungus at the beginning of may and come back home in the middle of June. during good seasons, each person can earn about 2000-3000 RMB. but good season s happen less and less frequently. all money earned in this way is spent on children who attend school and family costs such as new Year festivities. In one year, people spend about 1000 RMB on food and 500 on the clothes. In one month a household will spend another 100RMB on electricity and other essentials. In the summer villagers need to buy fertilizer, which costs about 400-500RMB.

In total, the average family can make 3700 rmb in cash income per year, and they have to spend 3550 per year. This leaves the average family with 150 rmb extra money left over each year. if the family has student who are going to university then they need to borrow money from others to afford their tuition.

Agriculture
Huadi village is the smallest village within Gule village. Villagers do not have many fields, and usually two or three households share about 8 mu of land between them. together they can earn about 800 rbm per year by selling their excess barley. Most families, however, can barley grow enough barley to support themselves. one mu of agricultural land can produce around 700-800 jin (350-400kg) of barley.

Herding
all of the villagers in Huadi village are farmers and each family has an average of five animals – one donkey, one cow, one pig, one horse and one goat . With the exception of the pig, these animals are used for milking and working, not for eating. As stated previously, villagers can sell butter and cheese and each family can earn about 600-800 RMB per year, depending on how much butter and cheese a family can save. This money is used to buy everyday essentials, such as medicine and salt.

Project Goal

The immediate goal of this project is to build a running water system for 40 households in Huadi village, the middle school in Rdo Sbis and the primary schools in Rdo Sbis Township .

Problems

Not enough water for villagers
the water piping that the villagers currently use does not belong to Huadi village itself. the system was funded by the government to supply Rdo Sbis Middle school with water 20 years ago. In Rdo Sbis Middle school there are about 650 students and 25 teachers. when there is not much water (which happens often), every class takes their turn to go to the spring (about two kilometers away from the school) with a big vat. As the school’s needs have highest priority, the government funded the school’s water system, knowing that the village adjacent to the school could also use the water supply. Previously the villagers had obtained water from a spring, which is about three kilometer from the village. the piped system at the school comes from another spring, three kilometers away. This spring belongs to Shang Gelu Village. People in and around Shang Gelu Village sometimes use the spring water to irrigate their fields, which results in water shortages for our village.

Another school called Rdo Sbis Center Primary School was built eight years ago, and is also using the same water system. there are 320 students and 20 teachers in that school and it is situated about 300 meters to the north of Rdo Sbis Middle School. Students walk from the primary school to the middle school in pairs to fetch water.

L ack of reliable water supply
every year during the harvest time, the water flow from the pipe system becomes unreliable, due to weeds that clog the ditch where the water flows. during this time villagers need to choose one person from each family to fetch water. the ditch often dries up, overflows and gets clogged unless villager to go to fix it. however, in this time the villagers are very busy and so these problems go unchecked for about three months. Because villagers are working so hard at harvesting, the water carrier must fetch four or five times the usual amount of water. the absence of one harvester is keenly felt, and all the other workers must struggle to work with extra effort. lately the water flow has almost slowed to a stop. As mentioned previously, that is because weeds and debris are clogging up the ditch. the amount of water coming from the pipe is so small that villagers must wait or 30 or 40 minutes to fill their small pails .

Dangerous frozen Ground
during the wintertime, the ground around the water pipe outlet freezes into thick, slippery ice. Fetching water thus becomes a dangerous task, especially for young children or older villagers who fetch water . Although nobody has been seriously injured yet, minor injuries are common.

Increased women’s labor
when the water flow is very slow, villagers travel about two kilometers to a spring or to another village ‘ s pipe system to collect water. Alternatively, they can walk to another village that is about 1 kilometer from our village to get water. Women usually go to fetch water at sunset and they must cook when they get home, so they do not have time to finish their chores or rest

Time consuming
When the water flow stops, the students must then spend their rest time fetching water from the spring, which is about two kilometers from the school. This uses up their valuable leisure time, which could otherwise be spent studying or playing.

Health problems
Because fetching water is such a difficult task, people use their water very sparingly. This affects levels of health and hygiene in the village, as families do not wash their clothes and houses often. As the water is hard to get, villagers don’t irrigate the vegetables in their house with clean water and they usually irrigate the vegetables with the dirty water, which is easy to get, so they vegetables are not very healthy.

Benefits

If we build a running water system that will pout a tap in every household, then there will be enough water for all of the villagers and several of the villagers’ problems will be solved:

• everyone in the village will have easy access to water, which is essential to their lives in myriad ways

• all of a family’s members can fully participate in the harvest and finish it more efficiently. In my own experience during the harvest time even one little child is very useful. therefore, if all the family members could attend to the harvest, then the task would be less laborious for all involved.

• the villagers and the students will not need to worry about slipping on the freezing ground around the pipe in winter. Children and the elderly will especially benefit from this rise in safety levels.

• Women in the villagers will not need to walk long distances to fetch water and they will have more time spend on leisure or income generation.

• the students won’t need to spend their rest time fetching water; they can do other activities like study and play basketball.

• Villagers will use water to wash their clothes or house more often, so it will be better for their heath and personal hygiene. they will also be able to irrigate the vegetable plots in their family homes more often, thus having access to healthier, fresher food .

Beneficiaries
This running water project will benefit approximately 1,300 people, including the people in my village and the students in both schools. Also the people who are living beside the village-restaurant and shop owners will benefit because the village is located beside the Township and they all are using the water tap that our village is using

Gender equality
the project will be implemented and managed by the villagers in Huadi village. It will benefit mostly women, because in my hometown women do most of housework, including fetching water. Also t he reason why there are both men and women overseeing the project is to let women participate , overseeing this project will train them to be more active because water is their concern. Moreover, their involvement in this project can be a first step for women’s greater involvement in village affairs and it will raise women’s position in the village. currently, women’s capabilities go unnoticed because they don’t participate in village affairs. So this time as they participate it might be difficult for them as they lack of management experience, but it’s a good chance for them to show their ability.

Government Approval
the local government asked the villagers to do a water project last year, but neither the villagers nor the government has the money to carry out a project like this. if we can secure funding for this project, the government will support it wholeheartedly because they really want this project to happen.

The steps of project
• Discuss the problems of accessing water with the villagers, and decide what can be done to alleviate these problems. (Done)

• Talk with village leader about the community’s most essential needs and how the water problem can be solved. (Done)

• Collect information about and for the project. (Done)

• Get official permission to carry out the project from our county leader. the leader has already asked us to rebuild the pipe system last year, but because of lack of money our village still didn’t do it.

• Talk to other project managers and workers who have experience working on this type of project. Discuss with them about what kinds of materials are needed. (Done)

• Figure out the price of materials in Xunhua County. (Done)

• Hold a meeting with villagers and ask three women and two men to be responsible for the materials, to supervise the condition of the water spring and ditch system. one woman will take care of the materials, one woman and one man are in charge of the spring, and the other man and woman are responsible for the water ditch. (Done)

• a skilled worker called Tselo who had done this kind of project in other villages studies the ground to find out the best place where the new water system should be built. (Done)

• take pictures of the current local conditions. (Done)

• Write project proposal. (Done)

• Funds are received.

• Hold a meeting with the villagers to discuss the start date of the project.

• Meet the contractors, Jiaobatai and Naizhi, to arrange when and how the villagers will prepare the sand and stones, and also the ditch where the pipe goes.

• Purchase materials such as cement and bricks from Xunhua County and have the five responsible villagers begin overseeing the project construction.

• Oversee the participation of the villagers until the project is completed.

• Interview the villagers to gage the success of the project.

• take pictures of the project after its completion.

• Send final report to donor.

Detailed Budget
Total Donor contribution in RMB,= 97,640-in dollars=$12, 431

* These prices are based on the costs of two running water projects that were done ion neighboring villages ion the last year. our village leader, who was ion charge of one of these running water projects supplied information for the data below

Sustainability
Because there will be five local villagers implementing the project, it will remain sustainable and also we have a care taking committee after the project is implemented . all the villages will have a vested interest in the long-term success of the project because they will have helped to build and care for the system. by using local suppliers of materials, the villagers are confident that the quality is very high. the suppliers have also guaranteed a return policy: for at least ten years we can return or exchange faulty parts. Also a man from our village called Tsering Dorji is very experienced at maintaining and repairing running water systems. he has been in charge of fixing the current system since it was built.

Photos

This is the only water supply in the village. It is situated in front of the school and it supplies clean (but unreliable) water to the village and the two schools.

Tsmo Jya’s parents left the village to make money. Because of the unreliable water situation, her household work has become more difficult. She has stopped studying in the school.

Lumo is washing weeds that are pig’s food, in the river, which is fed by rainfall, snowmelt and spring water. Unfortunately the river is polluted by people who live further upstream. they bathe and wash clothes in the river and also throw their rubbish into it. the river is the only source of village washing water.

Huangjya Tar is transporting water from the river to his home for his animals to drink.

ZhuomaTso is carrying clean water from the existing water source. This is a standard chore that takes up a lot of her time.

This boy’s parents went to dig caterpillar fungus away from the village. Now he and his grandfather are responsible for all the household chores

The Lhamo sisters fetch water together in this manner everyday.

This is the gate of Rdo Bis Middle School. all students in this school are currently using the existing water system.

The students from the School are fetching water.

The students from Rdo Bis Middle School crowd around the current water pipe to fetch water during their rest time.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 12:56 am and is filed under Water. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

running water project for minzhu village