Project Description
Building on World Vision’s Water for Women Laetem Dak Kona project, completed in 2022, from 2023-2024 this project aims to deliver lasting impact through:
• Support to community WASH committees to model and upgrade existing WASH infrastructure — both community-wide and at evacuation facilities — to be climate-resilient and able to withstand the increasing extreme weather events, while incorporating the bespoke needs of the most vulnerable and at-risk groups
• Improved gender equality and social inclusion in climate-resilient WASH planning and service delivery within communities and local institutions, with women, people with disabilities and people from sexual and gender minority communities contributing to climate-resilient inclusive WASH discussions, policy, planning and service delivery
• Strengthened capacity of national and subnational WASH actors (including rights holder organisations, organisations of persons with disability) to employ adaptive management in response to new learning and evidence about climate-resilient inclusive WASH.
Through vital Research, this project can develop a community-targeted campaign to improve water services (SDG6.1) that depend on rainwater harvesting. Specifically, the research will identify how community and household members can be influenced to properly maintain their rainwater harvesting and water access systems. Currently the supply of water from rainwater systems is unsafe (contaminated through poor Maintenance) and not able to supply water year round (due in part to poor maintenance).
Project Personnel and Beneficiaries
IWC (Regina Souter, Mark Love, Luisa Cordova), World Vision Vanuatu & Australia, Water for Women Fund (Australian Government).
The project will benefits directly the communities involved in world Visions’ WASH program in Vanuatu – this is estimated at 22,600 people. In addition, the research outputs will be available to WASH actors across the Pacific – a vastly higher umber of people
Outcomes to Date
ICR-WASH in Vanuatu aims to reach the following beneficiaries by the end of 2024 :
Direct beneficiaries: 22,600*
• women and girls: 11,074
• men and boys: 11,526
• people with a disability: 1,130
Indirect beneficiaries: 150,010*
Project Significance
In Vanuatu, two thirds of all households have unreliable water access and half the population only have access to basic sanitation. During any given two-week period, more than one in ten children under the age of five are at risk of having diarrhea and approximately one third are stunted.
Rainwater is currently the primary source of water for many households in Vanuatu. However past research has shown that these are poorly maintained, including the contamination of containers used to transport water for use, so that many people are drinking unsafe water. In addition, with limited maintenance of roofs, guttering and tanks, their storage capacity is lowered. Being able to store and supply more, safe water is critical for climate adaptation and underpins health and wellbeing.