Clean Water Improves Life in Remote Region of Bolivia
ACDI/VOCA Helps Bring Potable Water Within Reach for Mosetén Community
As a community leader, a nursing assistant and a mother, Shirley Argandoña has a lot of reasons to care about the water system in her Mosetén indigenous community of Inicua Bajo, Bolivia.
Argandoña, 35, is Inicua Bajo’s first female cacique (chief), and she has lived in the community since she was born, seeing firsthand how it suffers from unhealthy water and poor sanitation.
When the government of Bolivia identified Inicua Bajo as a community in need of assistance, ACDI/VOCA was there to help through its USAID-funded Integrated Community Development Fund (ICDF).
Improvised Water Collection Leave Families Vulnerable to Health Risks
During the rainy season, which lasts for a large part of the year in the tropics, the only access to Inicua Bajo is by boat from the Alto Beni River. One of the main problems resulting from the isolation this caused was the lack of clean water for the community’s 60 families.
Until recently, Argandoña and her neighbors cooked and washed with water they collected in buckets every morning from the Alto Beni River. When it rained, fast currents made the river water murky and unfit for use, so residents passed it through an improvised filter of ground peanuts and lemon. Several families from Inicua Bajo devised a system for collecting rainwater from rooftop rain gutters, but it did not provide enough water for the community’s needs.
Both sources of water posed serious health risks.
Clean Water Infrastructure Reaches Yungas Region
Through ICDF, ACDI/VOCA designed and constructed a potable water system that included 60 household connections and several public faucets in Inicua Bajo. Now, for the first time, Argandoña and her fellow community members have access to clean water to drink, cook and clean.
Potable water projects are one of many ways USAID/Bolivia helps communities in need within the Yungas region of Bolivia. Through the ICDF, ACDI/VOCA facilitates access to clean water by constructing water distribution networks, household connections and community water reservoirs. The project then convenes potable water committees and provide their members with technical assistance and training in the areas of plumbing, system management and administration. ACDI/VOCA places special importance on training project participants in basic hygiene to ensure that the water is used safely and has a positive and lasting impact on public health.
Citizens Learn to Conserve Water and Maintain System
Sustainability, both of the water systems and the water itself, is essential to Yungas communities. ACDI/VOCA applies strict environmental standards and emphasizes teaching project participants about the importance of protecting local watersheds. Offering tandem training in areas ranging from water system management and use to environmental protection empowers the community on multiple levels. Through technical capacity building, ACDI/VOCA provides tools that promotes the proper functioning and sustainability of the potable water systems over the long term. At the same time, by encouraging environmental conservation at the community level, the ICDF supports local efforts to ensure the availability of clean water for future generations.
Argandoña is happy that the ICDF’s high standards for environmental protection have given Inicua Bajo access to clean water without disturbing the community’s peaceful habitat or its harmony with the surrounding natural environment.
And of course, she is happy that her children and neighbors have clean water to drink.
“We are all happy with the water system; the water is clean and not dirty like the river water. Now we use clean water to cook and to shower; we use it for everything,” she says.
The potable water system constructed for Inicua Bajo is one of approximately 100 similar systems constructed by ACDI/VOCA through the ICDF across eight municipalities of the Yungas Region.
Learn more about our community-strengthening programs in Bolivia.
Pictured at top left: A child from the Mosetén community drinks potable water from the new water system.
