October 5, 2012

Fiji Hub

Construction team carry out secondary site assessments in the Yasawas

When Global Vision International and The Yasawa Trust began their construction project in Fiji in June 2011, one of the primary goals was to increase the availability of fresh drinking water in the communities of the Central Yasawa Group. After a year of working towards this goal, secondary site assessments have now been completed in all the villages GVI/YTF has worked in.

The Yasawa Islands have struggled with water problems for years and now with longer dry seasons, due to climate change, and less reliable rainfall during the wet season, the situation was becoming progressively worse. While most of the villages have boreholes or wells, these are not sources of drinking water and often become dangerously low during the dry season. The most simple and effective way to improve the overall accessibility to fresh water is through rainwater harvesting (RWH). Over the past year GVI/YTF has installed more than 20 rainwater harvesting tanks in 9 villages in the Central Yasawa Group. The RWH infrastructure has added over 180,000 litres of filtered drinking water to these 9 communities.

GVI/YTF carried out secondary site assessments to reassess the water security in the 9 villages a year on from the projects inception. In each community GVI/YTF checked the status of all new and improved infrastructure, created maps that detailed the location of any fresh water supply (including GPS position), and interviewed members of the community. GVI/YTF documented the condition of each RWH system, the materials that had been used during installation and identified any outstanding materials required. Community members were asked about water security issues in their village and if the GVI/YTF systems had been a positive and sustainable solution to the drinking water shortages.

The site assessments took place from late August to early September, which is towards the end of the dry season. This meant that it was the optimal time of year to survey the impact of the RWH systems. GVI staff and volunteers spoke with the headmen in each village, as well as with numerous other members of the communities. In each village, people expressed their appreciation for GVI/YTFs commitment to increasing their access to safe, filtered drinking water. Since people in the village have been drinking filtered water from the GVI/YTF tanks they have stopped getting sick as often, said the village spokesperson of Nabukeru village. Many of the people surveyed also stressed that they had begun rationing water as numerous tanks in their villages were now empty, but without the GVI/YTF tanks they would have had to start rationing water much earlier in the dry season. Luckily, with recent rainfall the RWH tanks have been refilled and villages are no longer rationing their drinking water.

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In addition to collecting information on RWH systems, GVI/YTF also asked community members about their agricultural practices. Most villages only cultivate root crops, which do not contain sufficient nutrients to sustain a healthy diet. Eight communities have asked GVI/YTF to assist with the development of youth managed community vegetable gardens. These gardens will grow a diverse range of vegetables to help improve the diet of village members and any surplus can then be sold to local resorts as an alternative source of income. With the work on the RWH systems almost complete, the community gardens are an exciting new opportunity for GVI/YTF to continue their work with communities in the Central Yasawa Group.

Re-visiting the villages towards the end of their first dry season since our project began has reminded us how crucial our work has been. With the new RWH installations drinking water supplies can now be sustained for much longer without rationing during the dry season, the quality of drinking water has been enhanced by filter systems and water security on the existing tanks has been improved so that less water is wasted. We will now use the information gathered from the water audits carried out in each village to compile a comprehensive report on the availability of fresh water for the entire Takini, giving an overview more technical than current Government reports.

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