Safe Drinking Water for Schoolchildren

The unhealthy habit of drinking water directly from the source without any treatment is very common in the rural area of the Dien Bien province, North West of Vietnam, especially among small children. At school they do not often have access to safe drinking water, so either they drink unsafe water, or they do not drink at all. In addition, a lot of small children from ethnic minority groups live far away from home to go to school; they live on their own and prepare food and drink for themselves with whatever water they have access to. The water supply coverage in Dien Bien is poor, rural people get water on their own from open wells, lakes, streams or water pools. They hardly treat it and often drink unsafe water since they do not take the time to boil it. The two target districts are poor rural areas with 131,443 people from 26,607 households. There are 142 schools with 47,606 schoolchildren and 4,157 teachers in the area. Among various ethnic groups the biggest are Thai, Kinh and H'mong.

Goals overview

The goal of the project is to provide 12 rural schools in Dien Bien with 7,200 children with access to safe drinking water by installing 240 filtration and safe storage systems. In addition, the project will raise the awareness and initiate behavioural change by providing knowledge on the importance of hygiene and promoting smart environment-friendly options such as the siphon filter, through an Information-Education-Communication (IEC) social marketing program.

Current status

SNV Vietnam started a broad program to promote smart low-cost technologies for rural water and sanitation in 2007. Household water treatment technologies like the siphon filter are a part of this program. The filter was demonstrated in Dien Bien, Lai Chau and Lao Cai for homes and public buildings. Since June 2009 it was combined with a closed bottle with tap to minimize re-contamination and ensure safe storage. The new concept has been tested and demonstrated in the target districts and was appreciated by the local schools and communities. The new school year started on September 5th 2009 and provides a great momentum for children to use their creative ideas to improve their lives and the lives of those around them at scale.

Project plan

The project aims to increase the use of safe drinking water among children through accommodating water filtration with siphon filters and safe storage systems at schools. Children, parents and teachers will be educated on the health benefits of drinking enough and safe water. The siphon filter which is an innovative low cost filter will be the core technology to be promoted, together with other environment-friendly options like SODIS (Solar Disinfection) . As soon as children, teachers and parents get used to that, they will help promote the concept to the community through an IEC-social marketing program in cooperation with the local health care service. It is expected to change the behaviour in HWTSS (Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage) in other settings like home, field and public places.

The main activities will include:
1. Introduce to local education and health administrations

2. Select target communes and schools: 4 communes, 12 schools

3. Organize complete water filtration and safe storage systems at school

4. Train children, teachers/ school staff on system O&M and facilitate O&M team formation and rules

5. Link with local SME and set up distribution and service system

6. Train health workers on participatory methodologies in rural water and sanitation, coach for HWTSS IEC-social marketing program

7. Train children, parents and teachers/ school staff on health, safe water and environment-friendly HWTSS options, introduce siphon filter and safe storage

8. Children, parents and health workers carry out IEC-social marketing activities for HWTSS behavior and options for local communities

9. Project governance, M&E: local project coordinator and monitoring officer, monthly planning and reporting system

10. Evaluate and document project process and results: project process documented, evaluation report with data from target area and control area.

Expected outcomes

• 240 filtration and safe storage systems installed
• 120 persons trained as community facilitators to train other
• 8 local staff trained per year
• Changed behavior; health and eco-friendly water treatment
• Local enterprise trained to provide products/ services

The water filtration and safe storage system is based on a very simple non-electrified technology such as the siphon filter, which is easy and safe to run and manage for small children. The schoolchildren will be assisted to form O&M (Operation and Management) teams and set rules to keep the system in order. This process will strengthen the awareness, ownership and empowerment of the children, making them confident to disseminate the knowledge and behaviour to their parents and community.

The IEC -social marketing program initiated by the schoolchildren is expected to lead to the behavioural change of the local communities and create the demand among parents and local people for the environment-friendly solutions promoted. At least one local enterprise will be connected to start supplying the filters and so create a sustainable supply chain. The user training, spare parts and after-sales service will be provided by the enterprise so that the consumers can use and maintain the system properly for a long time. The spare part replacement and service for the systems at school is very affordable (around 6 euros per system for 30 users per school year) and parents are expected to contribute from the second year onwards.