CURRENT PROJECT ACTIVITIES
2008 Progress Report
The 2007 has been very active year in our project activities. At the end of September we have completed the three-year CIDA supported sanitation program by supporting the construction of 1,205 permanent latrines. However, we still have a huge backlog of requests for assistance with sanitation and intend to continue the support of sanitation. According to a recent report by Nepal Living Standard Survey, 61 percent of Nepalese are without access to toilets. Perhaps those organizations that engaged in support of sanitation did not use the right approach. When we first engaged in sanitation activity, we have also encountered villagers' reluctance to have pit latrines on their property. Our current latrine design if the state of the art in rural sanitation and without doubt the best available in any part of rural Nepal. They are permanent, maintenance free and should last a lifetime.
Since the introduction of the sanitation program in 1998, we have received a total of 4,422 requests for assistance with sanitation and till the end of September 2007 assisted 2,647 households with their construction. The villagers also make a substantial in-kind contribution in locally available materials, voluntary labor and transportation, which is equal to that provided by NSP and results in highly cost effective program.
Furthermore, latrines constructed with our support can be retrofitted with biogas plants that supply cooking gas to the villagers' homes as a substitute for cooking with firewood. Cooking with biogas provides not only environmental benefits by saving trees, but even to a greater extent health benefits In Nepal, indoor air pollution remains a silent and unreported killer, with rural women and children most susceptible. This because the majority of village houses lack good ventilation. Some 80 percent of rural households in Nepal use solid fuel such as firewood for cooking. The smoke from these fuels more than double the risk of respiratory illnesses. We have already assisted 132 householders with biogas plants installation as a pilot project and intend to support the activity in the future. The local government is also very supportive of the biogas program and provides substantial subsidies to villagers who convert to cooking with biogas. However, in spite of the low cost of the biogas plants, they are still beyond reach to the majority of the region's population due to the lack of any source of income.
During 2007, we have also supported the construction of two new primary schools, one in Chyamrangbesi VDC, which is illustrated above and the other in the Budhakhani VDC. We also continue to provide additional facilities to previously constructed schools, such as additional classrooms, fences and twin toilets.
We are now also supporting micro-electrification projects to villages, which cannot be connected to any of the four larger hydel projects currently constructed by the government. Although they generate only 100 watts to each household, they also contribute toward cleaner living environment by replacing a kerosene wick. We have already completed one such project in the Phokshintar VDC and three more are in the planning stage, one in the Phalametar VDC and two more in the Gokule VDC.
Michael R. Rojik, Executive Director
E-mail: projects-info@nepal-school-projects.org
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