Peru Initiatives
Water For People became an official registered NGO with the Peruvian government in 2010. The program has begun to take form and will consist of two broad areas: water management and sanitation services.
WATER MANAGEMENT
Water For People–Peru recognizes that coverage is an important indicator of success, but increasing coverage in targeted regions is a means, not an end, to developing sustainable water management. While the country experiments with different management models in large cities and small towns as part of the government’s national water and sanitation policy, there is next to no innovation in rural areas.
Though methods may vary among regions, based upon local conditions, our overarching goals include:
- Community cash: Consistent with Water For People’s South American policies, communities contribute cash to their water system as an indicator of both interest/participation and ability to secure cash for future repairs
- Development of a solid supervision/quality control process to guarantee quality of construction;
- Development of various management options, based on successful rural management of electricity and irrigation programs
- Integrated water and sanitation development that addresses needs in school as well as the surrounding communities, so schoolchildren can practice at home the new hygiene behavior they learn in school
- Long-term financing mechanisms: Many of the unserved (or once-served) in Peru live in remote, rural areas, driving up initial capital costs. Part of our work with local government is to devise creative solutions to support repairs/replacement that are out of financial reach of the communities themselves.
SANITATION SERVICES
The previously mentioned cholera epidemic led to a massive, country-wide “latrinization” campaign. The government also provides a monthly subsidy of 100 soles (about $30) to the extreme poor; a condition of receiving this subsidy is that households must build a toilet. Such toilets range in condition from abandoned and full to maintained and working.
The government estimates that approximately 12 million people do not have access to an improved toilet. Surveys indicate that many people who use unimproved toilets are willing, even able, to invest in a more permanent solution, but lack knowledge of options beyond conventional sewage. Water For People–Peru plans to test the hypothesis that changing the sanitation approach from a onetime transaction to an ongoing relationship between a user and sanitation-management company will lead to satisfied users, increasing use and maintenance. Water For People–Peru financing will not be used to directly subsidize toilet construction, but rather to develop private company–implemented ecological sanitation in semirural agricultural areas where demand for fertilizer is high and small-business sanitation options in peri-urban areas.
