Water project making life easier for Ekipe villagers

Until last year, residents of Ekipe village on North Efate Island in Vanuatu had no access to running water.

Villagers like as Marie, a mother of five, were forced to dig holes in the sand and wait for them to fill with fresh water. Doing so was time-consuming and rarely provided enough water for cooking, bathing and washing clothes.

"We go to the market in Port Vila 40 miles away to sell our goods and we come back late,” said Marie. “Gathering water was very hard because the water source was far from our homes.”

Many local communities in Vanuatu use mainly fresh water for cleaning and consumption, but rising sea levels have increased the fresh water's salinity, causing health problems, especially among women and children.

Today, however, villagers in Ekipe have clean, running water inside their homes thanks to a project implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP).

So far, the project has installed water taps in 75 households in Ekipe that connect to a community water pipe.

With technical assistance from the New Zealand International Aid and Development Agency (NZAID), a partner of UNDP, Ekipe villagers have been trained in plumbing and have learned how to build bathrooms and toilets for their homes. They have also learned how to manage project funds and generate income that will help sustain their water supply by introducing water fees.

Access to running water has also helped to better prepare Ekipe residents for the violent storms that frequently hit the island. The villagers use the water to make sand bricks and construct stronger houses that will stand up to future cyclones. 

Although much of the world has seen progress in regard to running water access, rural areas remain at a disadvantage, particularly in Oceania and sub-Saharan Africa, where rural coverage of piped water remains at 37 percent and 47 percent, respectively. Urban areas, by contrast, have 91 percent and 83 percent coverage.

Through initiatives like the water project in Ekipe, UNDP is working to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015, one the targets of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7.  

 “Access to clean water is a human right,” said Ms. Leah Nimoho, National Coordinator, SPG Vanuatu. “Now families in Ekipe have water right next to their kitchen and they have more time to study and do other work rather than going around looking for water.”