Report: Water System Rehabilitation Lupang Pangako Project

This project would rehabilitate an unused water system infrastructure, add an electric pump and strengthen the CBO to become self-reliant through technical and business training.

The training was accelerated to fit in with the community schedule. This finished the implementation of infra structure ahead of schedule as well as formation of the the organization. Project is now entering the mentoring, mentoring and evaluation stage which will last for 6 months.

Amount of water available is less than projected but is a significant improvement on what existed. Well is being conditioned and evaluation of changes needed will be done over the next few months. Casing has been purchased for future development.

The project will bring enough revenue to pay staff to maintain the system and cover costs of any repairs and cleaning.

USER FEES:
$1144/year
Each family in the community agrees to pay 5peso service fee month (865peso/week = approx $22/wk)

ANNUAL MAINTENANCE:
$800 annual maintenance fees
$250 cleaning, replacement parts, repairs/year

The project uses an asset based approach where the community looks at the resources it has and then uses those as a basis for this project. The largest asset is not the unused tank and hand pump, but the people within the community. The organization and local community members will install the water system while being supervised and trained so that they can maintain and operate the system in the future. Also the organization will receive capacity building training so that they are
strong enough and have the skills and community support to keep the system operating. Also with this enhanced capacity the community can work on other projects with only technical help from outside.

This capacity building within the organization and the community is the key to long term sustainability. Long term sustainability requires input from the whole community and consists of ongoing administration, operation and maintenance of the system. This means that the users of the system contribute fees to the organization who then use these fees to pay for electricity, preventative maintenance and break down maintenance. Design of the project concentrates on this capacity building with a very significant training and workshop component allowing the community to develop the features required for sustainability. This utilizes an existing cooperative and the more efficient elements of a cooperative structure to provide an efficient community service.

Fee's are being paid by consumers but the collection is slower than expected. The tribal dynamic that was expected to be of benefit had been destroyed by 20 years of broken promises and a culture of "doleout" aid. This is the first project where counterpart and participation was a requirement. It took longer for the community belief in the system to build up. It is now existing and the mentoring program will reinforce this.