Exciting New 100 Community Well Campaign – Northeast Haiti
In March of 2014, the division of the national government of Haiti responsible for potable water and sanitation throughout the country, DINEPA, agreed to join Haiti Outreach in a breakthrough 100 Community Well Project in the Northeast Department. This is a $2.3 million project that will take 2 – 3 years to accomplish. It is the first time that the government has agreed to have Haiti Outreach train their staff in how we do our community development work. In particular, we will be training their inspectors to follow-up with communities that have been trained to manage their wells and for whom Haiti Outreach has created a new, clean water well. They conduct the monthly well inspections after the well has been turned over to the community
Our experience in bringing clean, community managed water to the rural population of Haiti has enjoyed outstanding success. Our model for training well management committees and conducting monthly inspections has raised the number of working wells from just 50% to 99%. Our partners, such as Rotary International and Water.org, have worked with us to expand our capacity to deliver these wells regularly and reliably, providing funds to deliver our program to more and more rural communities around the country. While we have always worked closely with DINEPA and shared information with them about our projects, our high success rate of working wells has led to this breakthrough initiative that will result in direct collaboration.
The vision of Haiti Outreach is for Haiti to become a developed country. For this to happen, the government of Haiti must take on an increasing role, being responsible for their infrastructure, eventually including providing the oversight and management training needed to sustain any project for the long term. This is why this project is such a breakthrough, in that it involves more than the local community and governments; it will now be national in scope and responsibility.
The project will concentrate in and around 4 towns in the Northeast: Capotille, Ferrier, Ouanaminthe, and Trou du Nord, with about 25 new wells being created in each, resulting in clean, community managed water for around 40,000 people. In the past, Haiti Outreach has conducted two years of monthly inspections once a well was complete. For these communities, this will no longer be necessary, as DINEPA will take over this role. The hope is that this initiative will be so successful that DINEPA will not only want to continue this type of project in other parts of the country, but they will eventually want to be trained to conduct the entire Haiti Outreach community development program as well.
The government of Haiti, however, is not funding any part of this 100 well initiative project, except for paying the expenses of their staff being trained. So we are starting a campaign to raise the entire $2.3 million to realize this project. Your generosity and support, and that of your church, school, civic club, or any foundations you may know, will make the difference in moving this project forward. Please contact us and let us know how you can contribute to this breakthrough project and campaign today!