Water Schemes Program

(+237) 679.884.778
diswe.kumbo@gmail.com

P.O Box 115 - Kumbo
N.W.R, CAMEROON

Water Schemes Program

Over the years since 2004, Caritas has assisted and accompanied the Construction of Potable Water Schemes to 70 communities in 4 Phases and the 5th Phase is currently going on with 8 Communities. This will bring the number to 78 by 2023. The Village Pipe Borne Water Supply is a program with other sub-projects and activities accompanying it, all in a bid to foster Sustainability and Environmental Protection.

The water supply projects are all community driven initiatives that commence with the submission of a written application expressing the need and requesting for assistance or the community expresses the need during the Bishop’s Pastoral visit. After analysis and costing of the project, a project proposal is submitted to the donors and when approved, a whole list of activities are systematically implemented till the finish point the community has and are managing and maintaining the water supply schemes.

Activities carried out under the water project

Community Mobilization, Sensitization, Education: This is done for both the new and the old water project communities. All activities are always accompanied with hard copy visibility materials for sensitization and awareness raising such as Posters, Brochures containing short messages and colorful Pictures to aid those who cannot read. The new projects are mobilized on their role and responsibilities prior to commencement of construction such as financial contribution, material contribution and local labor. The communities are educated and sensitized on:

Catchment Protection
WASH
Gender Balance Actions
Social Empowerment
Capacity Building
Technical Construction Works

All these water communities both the new and the old are educated on the need for catchment protection in order to fight against water contamination at the level of the catchment. They are educated on the various tasks such as no trespassing in and around the catchment area, defecation, fire tracing, planting of water friendly tress, fence round the area etc and most of all official acquisition and documents of the area by the community. Caritas Kumbo does not only accompany the communities in education and sensitization on water catchment protection. They also provide water friendly tress and also assisted with barbed wire to fence the catchment areas off human and animal trespassing.

Hygiene and sanitation has been the core component as far as community water projects are concern. These communities are educated on hygiene as a whole from the water catchment right to the drinking cups and their personal hygiene. With the outbreak of covid 19 pandemic, Caritas Kumbo in line with hygiene could not leave out awareness raising and education of the population on the preventive measures to combat the pandemic. This was not done only with the water communities but to the entire population in the Diocese of Kumbo. The different type of hygiene where emphases is laid is household hygiene, personal, environmental and structural hygiene. Before caritas commence construction in any community, the statistics of the water related illness are taken from the health institution(s) in and around the area and after construction the statistics are still taken to compare if there is a drop in the prevalence of the water borne diseases. During the implementation of the 5th Phase of this project which is currently going on, Caritas kumbo during their mobilization and sensitization visit, two persons are volunteer from each community and trained as community hygiene and sanitation promoters to always move round and educate the entire community on the general hygiene so as to continue to fight against the prevalence of water related diseases. These hygiene and sanitation volunteer are working and their reports are being forwarded to the Caritas office. This can be verbal report, written report accompanied with photos of activities.

There is continues sensitization and education as far as gender issues is concern in the entire water project. This is to make sure that there is gender equality were by all categories of people (youth, men and women) are being participated at all levels and also benefit from the project. Caritas Kumbo have realized that must projects have failed due to the fact that women and the young are being exempted from the projects, so to ensure sustainability of the project, all the target groups have to be consider and not a particular group of people. Women have primary roles in the collection, transport, use, and management of water and the promotion of sanitary practices, and yet are hardly involved in decision making in the sector.

The social worker identifies and mitigates together with the community, potential minor disputes/conflicts that could or arise as a result of the water projects in communities from conception, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all the water project communities in the Diocese of Kumbo. The social worker ensures that the community creates a management committee which will take care of the community in all their activities and also encouraged to acquire their catchment area and protect to avoid land disputes or conflicts. Needs of the individual, group and community are identified and develop plans to improve community well-being. The social worker encourages the committee and community on accountability and communication. This helps to avoid conflicts between the committee and the community. Caritas Kumbo encourages community togetherness as far as the water project is concerned.

Besides the education, mobilization and sensitization of the communities as a whole, training workshops are organized for the water management committee members to boost their capacities in the various aspects that directly affect the water scheme and its functionality. These include capacity building on hygiene and sanitation practices, environment and catchment protection, water systems maintenance and management, Leadership and Governance and resource mobilization and other related topics.

This is the major activity as it makes available the various structures through which potable water is made available and proximate to the community. The technical construction is carried out by a team of technicians while skilled and unskilled labor is also employed from the village in under execution. The community plays a major role during each phase of the water scheme by carrying out excavation of the catchment, tanks and stand pipe sites, trenching and backfilling of pipelines and the provision of local materials like sand stones and timber besides their cash contribution which is a certain percentage of the total cost of the project which is calculated depending on the financial viability of the community.