Safe Water Access and Community in the Dominican Republic
H2O4ALL’s partnerships in the Dominican Republic have allowed us to help thousands of people, before and after the pandemic. Here’s how.
Since 2011, H2O4ALL and our partners have been working to improve safe water and sanitation access in the Dominican Republic. Our partnerships with Wine to Water and Servant’s Heart Ministries have allowed us to bring safe water access to thousands of families, improving life for hundreds of thousands of people in impoverished rural communities with limited safe water access.
According to Water Action Hub, the Dominican Republic has achieved significant progress in the areas of safe water and sanitation over the past two decades. More than 90 percent of people in urban areas have access to some form of water service. However, away from the large cities water services become scarce and unreliable. Many rural communities are still relying on unprotected water sources and requiring women and children to collect water daily for their families.
Lack of safe water access takes its toll on rural families. Without access to protected water sources, many communities are forced to rely on contaminated water for drinking, cooking or cleaning. This often leads to the spread of waterborne diseases such as cholera and dysentery. Children grow up surrounded by the risk of waterborne disease, and this risk can affect their health and keep them out of school. For many families in rural communities, the lack of safe water can be a massive hindrance towards raising healthy families, educating their children, and breaking familial cycles of poverty.
Over the past decade, H2O4ALL and our partners have helped thousands of families in the Dominican Republic gain access to safe water, protecting families from the risk of waterborne disease. Much of our success is due to forming great partnerships in the area. Our collaboration with Wine to Water and Servant’s Heart Ministries has allowed us to reach more people through existing community institutions— community centers, schools and clinics. In turn, increasing safe water access has allowed these places to provide safer, more effective support to their communities, improving the lives of community members in more ways than one.
A Filter in Every House
Wine to Water is a nonprofit organization based in Boone, North Carolina. For over a decade, they’ve worked to provide safe water access to impoverished communities in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Sudan, India, Cambodia, Uganda and Peru. Their main modus operandi for these projects is a remarkably simple ceramic filter, which can provide safe water for up to seven people. The Dominican Republic is home to the factory that produces the filters. In addition, H2O4ALL and Wine to Water’s partnership in the Dominican Republic has benefited hundreds of thousands of people in water-stressed communities.
Our partnership began in 2014, with the Synergy for Water Now project. Supported by Grand Challenges Canada, H2O4ALL partnered with Wine to Water — then known as Filterpure — to bring safe water to water-stressed communities in the Dominican Republic. H2O4ALL and Filterpure worked to develop a maximally efficient filter, experimenting with several different designs and different proportions of raw materials, before distributing ceramic point-of-use filters to families in three communities in the Dominican Republic. H2O4ALL also educated the families who received filters on filter use, filter maintenance, and the importance of safe water.
After the project, H2O4ALL conducted a survey among 82 families who benefitted from the project. The results showed that the vast majority of households who received filters had kept and properly maintained their filters, and that incidences of diarrhea and other waterborne diseases had been drastically reduced. H2O4ALL and Filterpure resolved to continue distributing filters throughout water-stressed communities in the Dominican Republic. Since then, thousands of families have benefited from this partnership.
Wine to Water’s Filters
The filters, made from locally sourced clay, sawdust, and nanoparticle silver, are remarkably simple. When the pots are fired in the kiln, the sawdust burns, creating a layer of charcoal and producing small fissures in the pot to filter out water. When water enters the pot, the charcoal layer latches onto micro-organisms. Meanwhile, the nanoparticle silver is used to scramble bacterial DNA, preventing bacteria in the water from reproducing and continuing to contaminate the water. With these techniques, one of the ceramic filters can remove 99.9% of all bacteria from contaminated water.
These filters are produced in a factory in the Dominican Republic, which employs people from the local community. Each filter can provide for a family of five for up to five years. Since 2012, H2O4ALL and Wine to Water have been distributing these filters to individual families in the Dominican Republic. H2O4ALL educates families on the need for filtered water and the impact contaminated water can have on their family, along with instructing families on how to use and maintain their filter.
To date, the ceramic filter project has been one of the most far-reaching projects H2O4ALL has implemented. More than 90,000 households in the Dominican Republic and Haiti have received a ceramic water filter from H2O4ALL and Wine to Water. Since each filter provides for four to five people, the filter project has benefited almost half of a million people in total.
Because of Wine to Water’s ceramic filters, almost half a million people have been able to live with a consistent source of safe water. Families have been able to rely on filters to purify their water for drinking, cooking and washing, without having to worry about the spread of waterborne diseases. The risk of infant mortality is lowered as young children grow up without the threat of waterborne diseases. As these children grow older, they are healthier and are less likely to miss school due to illness, giving them a shot for a brighter future.
Servant’s Heart Ministries
Servant’s Heart Ministries is a charitable organization based in Nova Scotia. Their mission is dedicated to the sustainable development of impoverished communities in Haiti and Dominican Republic. Development programs provide education, medical support, and resources to families, in order to break long cycles of poverty and prepare the community’s young people for brighter futures.
Many of the problems which Servant’s Heart Ministries tries to address — lack of education, poverty, lack of medical resources — are underpinned by the lack of safe water in the community. Many children will not grow up healthy or be able to learn in school if they grow up surrounded by the threat of disease, and some children may not be able to attend school at all because of the burden of collecting water for their family. Without an education, children in impoverished communities lose opportunities and may fall into the same patterns of poverty as their families. And medical centers cannot operate effectively or safely without a safe and reliable water source.
Because of this relationship, Servant’s Heart and H2O4ALL have been able to rely on one another to create effective change. Servant’s Heart has access to community supports which make for effective and useful water access points, and H2O4ALL’s safe water projects allow Servant’s Heart’s community supports to function effectively and safety.
Danica’s Dream
H2O4ALL’s first partnership with Servant’s Heart Ministries began in 2014, with a safe water project at the Centro de Salud Danica in Villa Nazaret, Sosua. Centro de Salud Danica, or Danica’s Dream, is part of a medical outreach program by Servant’s Heart Ministries to help impoverished families in the Dominican Republic. Since the opening of Centro de Salud Danica in 2008, the surrounding community has seen a sharp decrease in skin disease and other communicable illnesses.
The Center also fulfills an important role for mothers in the community. One of the main purposes of the Danica’s Dream medical outreach is to help new and expecting mothers start healthy families through medical care and education. Since 2008, hundreds of mothers in the area around Villa Nazaret have relied on Danica’s Dream for everything from prebirth checkups to diapers and blankets.
However, like many healthcare facilities in water-stressed countries, the site lacked a steady water source for years. In 2014, H2O4ALL installed a safe water source on premises, including solar pumps, piping from the tanks to the clinic, and a disinfection system. With a capacity of 10,000 litres, the water system provide abundant water for the needs of the clinic and its patients.
Since the installation of the project, the clinic has been able to provide visitors with safe water for drinking and hygiene. Clinic staff have been able to provide safer and more effective care to patients, now that they have adequate clean water for proper sanitation. In addition, the water source at the clinic has been able to provide water for the surrounding community, protecting locals from waterborne diseases and keeping the whole community healthier and safer.
The Colegio Luz, Amor y Vida
The Colegio Luz, Amor Y Vida is a primary school in Sosua. The school has 120 young students from the surrounding community, many of whom come from impoverished families. For many of them, the school has provided them and their families with a new opportunity to receive a good education and open up new opportunities for the future. However, like many schools in water-stressed communities, the lack of water access in both the school and the surrounding community have taken its toll on the children’s lives and their education.
A few years ago, the school lacked a safe water access point, leaving it without water for drinking, latrines or sanitation. The students had to bring their own water to school, and many of them were taking daily walks to fetch water by themselves. Many of the school’s students were walking 1–3 kilometres every day to the nearest water source. Many of the natural water sources in the area are unprotected, and easily become contaminated. Waterborne diseases were common in the area, and many children missed school frequently because of illness.
In 2016, H2O4ALL partnered with Servant’s Heart Ministries to provide the Colegio Luz, Vida y Amor with a safe water source. The new water system, which includes a 5000-litre tank, solar-powered pumps, and a purification system, provides abundant water for all the school’s needs. Children are able to access safe water at the school, and to collect water at school instead of leaving the community to find an unprotected source. The school is able to maintain sanitation and keep latrines running now that they have an abundant source of water. The surrounding community has also benefited, as many families have been able to rely on the school’s water access point.
The Colegio Luz, Vida y Amor has always been dedicated to supporting its students and helping them build the best possible future. That’s not easy to do in a water-stressed community, especially in a school which is itself lacking a safe water source. Thanks to H2O4ALL and Servant’s Heart Ministries, however, the school can help its students stay safe and healthy throughout their education while supporting its community as well.
Loma Community Centre
Two years ago, H2O4ALL initiated our latest safe water project in Sosua at the Loma Community Centre. Like Danica’s Dream, Loma Community Centre is a Servant’s Heart project dedicated to helping families and children. The community centre’s school program provides education for children from impoverished families, along with art and music programs to supplement children’s public school education.
In addition, the centre provides support to struggling families. They provide vital education and medical care to new mothers in the community, helping vulnerable young women empower themselves and take care of their children. Finally, mentoring programs for children and their parents aim to heal broken relationships within families and break cycles of abuse and poverty.
Over the past few years, the centre has profoundly affected many families in the area. In testimonies from families who benefited from the project, parents speak proudly of their children’s progress at the community center. Many expressed hope that their children will have more opportunities than they did.
However, like the Colegio Luz, Vida y Amor, Loma Community Centre lacked a safe water source, and many of the Sosua residents who frequented the community centre were struggling to find safe water for their families. Since so many local families were relying on the community centre, it seemed like an ideal place to provide the community with a safe water access point.
In 2019, H2O4ALL initiated our latest partnership with Servant’s Heart in Sosua — a 5,000 litre safe water system at Loma Community Centre, including a storage tank and solar-powered pumps. Now, not only can the children and young mothers who depend on the centre, but their families and neighbors have access to a safe, abundant source of water.
Keeping Kids Safe in Schools
Last year, H2O4ALL reached out to many of our client communities to combat the spread of COVID-19. Water access has always been vital for disease prevention, but in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it had a different meaning. While the best available defense against the viruses for many communities were hygiene and social distancing, these things were difficult to do in areas where most people had to leave their houses to find water. To make matters worse, many water-stressed communities lacked access to safe water and soap for protective hygiene.
The purpose of Clean Hands Initiative was to stop the spread of COVID-19 in at-risk communities around the world by providing safe water and sanitation. Over the course of the year, clinics, community centers and schools in rural communities received safe water access and hand-washing stations.
In the Dominican Republic, stopping the spread of COVID-19 took the form of Wine to Water’s ceramic filters. H2O4ALL and Wine to Water teamed up to provide families in the communities of Cangrejo, Bayacanes, and Baitoa with safe water filters and soap, in order to help them maintain protective hygiene and avoid spreading the virus to their families or neighbors.
In addition, schools and medical centers in Villa Altagracia, Valverde Mao, and Moca also received water access points and hygiene resources so that they could operate safely throughout the pandemic and provide water to their communities. Ten different schools throughout the region received safe water and soap so that children and staff could work safely without getting sick or passing the virus on to their families.
Our work in schools this year is the continuation of more than a decade of work in the Dominican Republic. Through strong partnerships and good relationships with our client communities, we’ve been able to bring safe water access to thousands of people, improving the quality of life for water-stressed communities and helping them prepare for a brighter future.
Thanks to H2O4ALL for providing images, and to H2O4ALL, Wine to Water and Servant’s Heart Ministries for providing information on the projects.
