We have worked with Practical Action since the beginning of 2007 as we really liked their approach to supporting poor people in changing their lives. Initially, our funding supported a three year project in the districts of Faridpur and Jamalpur in Bangladesh. The innocent foundation helped pay for two Rural Technology Centres (RTCs), giving 7,500 farming families the opportunity to build their skills and overcome the regular risk of malnutrition.

We were really impressed with the impact of the RTCs (there’s much more about them here) so we were delighted to have the opportunity to support Practical Action’s work again, in Peru.

Our funding has supported part of a large project in the Peruvian Andes which is working with 11 communities in the rural districts of Marangani, Sichuan and Paul to introduce safe sanitation, clean water and renewable energy for the first time to 1,700 people. Conditions are harsh as, during the winter months, families struggle with heavy rainfall, frost and extreme cold and in the summer face drought. Our funding is providing 300 eco-san toilets, which not only provide safe sanitation, but also return valuable nutrients to the soil.

In May 2011, we began to support another project in Peru. The Cloud Forests project is reaching out to 6,000 families across hundreds of communities and aims to help people to protect their environment in a way which is sensitive, sustainable and profitable. It demonstrates that better forestry management can enable families to build more productive livelihoods and, ultimately, gives them the power to transform their lives.

Practical Action's approach is simple yet really effective: find out what people are doing and help them to do it better.

Climate change hits families living in isolated areas first and hardest and they need to be able to adapt their way of life in order to survive, by introducing simple technologies and sharing practical skills. Practical Action ensures that whole communities can build self- sufficient lives and livelihoods.

2010 – Eco-san Toilets

This project is working with Quechuan communities, indigenous to the Andes. For decades, their lives and livelihoods have been dependent on natural resources, but this over-reliance has caused environmental degradation, made worse by an erratically changing climate. People are struggling to make a living traditionally, from growing potatoes and rearing alpacas, as both are weakened by droughts and downpours.

Families are involved at all stages of the project, working with local community experts, known as ‘Kamayoqs’, who will be trained to share agricultural and other information. Our funding supports two years of a three and a half year project which finishes in 2011. It aims to change the way people live and work: for the first time, 11 communities will have access to clean water, sanitation and renewable energy. Currently, families collect their water from local streams, often contaminated by human and animal waste. Women’s lives are dominated by collecting enough water for their crops, animals and families.

Traditionally, Quechuan families have practiced open defecation, which is polluting their local environment and harmful to their health. We are funding 300 eco-san toilets, the materials to construct them and the training of 300 families in how to build and maintain them, and use the by-products.

The eco-san toilets are unique: faeces and urine are collected and treated separately, producing low cost fertilisers to help families improve their farming. The toilets are ‘dry’, requiring no water to function, so ideal for the high Andes. Human waste becomes a resource and pollution is reduced.

‘I feel we are a different family now that we have a toilet. It is clean and safe and I have been trained in how to use our own waste to make our potatoes grow. This is a wonder to us all”. Pamela Lino, Pumanota, Peru

2011 – Cloud Forests

Between 2005 and 2009, Practical Action worked with 5,000 farming families in the Chinchipe river basin, safeguarding 100,000 hectares of forest, ensuring that the communities in which these families lived improved their livelihoods and protected their environments at the same time.  They are continuing to apply this approach with other native and migrant communities in the Andean cloud forests of Peru and Bolivia.

We have committed to support the work for three years with our part funding for the Cloud Forests project, which started in 2009.  The work focuses on enabling communities to better manage the forest sustainably, whil e helping them to improve their income.  Activities include forest management and coffee growing, and we are specifically supporting the lives and livelihoods component of the project.

Eco-san Project update – September 2010

Winter in the rural Andean highlands where the Quechuan people live was particularly extreme this in 2010 – in July, the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency as temperatures plummeted to -24oC.

In this context, Practical Action’s work to improve access to safe sanitation, clean water and renewable energy for these vulnerable communities bec ame even more crucial.
In the reporting period from March-July 2010, significant progress was made on the project’s sanitation provision goals:

• 105 eco-san latrines were supplied to families across 7 districts of the High Andes, providing 285 men, women and children with safe sanitation.

• 140 local people (91 men and 49 women) undertook comprehensive training to take responsibility for the sanitation technology.

Thanks to the eco-san latrines, families observed marked improvements in their local environment. The land surrounding their homes became free from human waste and their domestic and farm animals no longer consumed it.

Project update June 2011

As the project comes to a close later this year, the excellent work Practical Action has done in remote villages in the High Andes is clearly evident, both in photographs of completed works, and from the testimonials from villagers who have benefitted from the work.

The families themselves build the latrines using materials sourced locally, in addition to the specialist equipment provided by the i nnocent f oundation funding. This personal investment of time and labour from each family has engendered a sense of ownership of the new toilets, and has been instrumental in the cultural adoption of using and maintaining the eco-loos.

This is typical of Practical Action’s approach : it recognises the need to make technology relevant, and to supplement equipment with education to ensure new systems are fully adopted and long-term habits are formed.

 “The gift of material goods makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free” (E.F. Schumacher – founder of Practical Action)

• Eco-san latrines have now been supplied to 227 families in 11 i solated Quechuan villages of the High Andes, providing 1,135 men, women and children with safe sanitation.
• 13 workshops have been delivered on both the operation and maintenance of the eco-san latrines and on good sanitation practices - such as washing hands – to ensure that the new equipment is supported by the adoption of good hygiene practices
• 9 community training sessions have been completed, teaching how human waste can be safely used as an organic fertiliser
• 153 home visits have been conducted by kamayoqs to ensure these lessons are reinforced with practical advice on application.

Consuela is 46 years old. She shares her small home with her husband and her daughter’s family in a village balanced upon the heights of the Andes. Life this high is harsh as the infertile soil makes it difficult to grow crops.

Consuela’s family, like others in the community, struggle to make a living through growing potatoes or farming alpacas as both practices are weakened by the increasing extremity of droughts and downpours. Furthermore, the poverty here is compounded by the village’s isolation and limited access to basic services. Lack of clean water means that illness is common, and Consuela and her family often
suffer from diarrhoea and stomach aches:

“The children make a mess all the time as there are no toilets in the town. It’s humiliating because even the dogs chase after them.”

The project workers showed Consuela and her neighbours how to construct eco-san latrines, as well as providing clean and fresh water through a community water supply system. Consuela plans to use waste collected in the toilet to fertilize the natural pastures around her village. She also hopes to use the fertiliser to build a garden in which to grow vegetables to improve her family’s food supply.

“As a result of all our work with Practical Action, we are changing our lives! We are very happy that the project came to these neglected communities.”

 There’s lots of positive comment:

From remote villages:

• “No authority or organisation had ever visited my village before, or even remembered that we live up in these mountains” [Tica Soncco Casa]
• “It would appear no-one is interested in us because we live too far out in the countryside” [Manay Morontoy]

Turning round some initial distrust:

• “At first I did not believe in the ideas we’d been told about in the workshops, but then I saw these eco-loos being installed in other homes and… now we’ve changed our way of life” [Tica Soncco Casa]
• “It made me wonder – is [contamination] why our animals are getting sick more often?” [Catunta Sancca]

To understanding:

• “The project has taught us several ways to prevent contamination and the one I liked best was the eco-san latrine because it does not use water – there is less water available here in the highlands.” [Catunta Sancca]
• “Most importantly, [they gave] us training on how to look after this new equipment” [Manay Morontoy]

And doing things differently:

• “Now we all know how to use the toilet – it is very clean and does not smell” [Catunta Sancca]
• “We no longer urinate in the stalls or behind the house, which was a source of contamination even for my animals” [Tica Soncco Casa]
• “[We have built] four large rooms which we have plastered and covered with a corrugated metal roof... because the eco-san latrine we built with the project was better than our little stone and mud rooms, so we asked ourselves how could the bathroom be better than our own bedroom?... Our children now come here happily and sometimes even stay over because they say the house is lovely.” [Manay Morontoy]