NEW AND BETTER HORIZONS

To develop, a community needs its members to be in good health. In Nuevos Horizontes, a rural community in Tipitapa, Nicaragua, we offered the inhabitants the opportunity to achieve this through access to safe water and hygiene promotion along the American Nicaraguan Foundation.

  • COMMITTED COMMUNITY

    The great commitment and participation of the inhabitants determined the success of the project. With the FECSA (Family, School and Healthy Community) methodology, we promoted the community organization to build a Drinking Water and Sanitation Committee, whose members maintain the water system we installed, ensuring the project's sustainability.

    Also, through workshops based on this methodology, we developed capacities in children and adults. They learned, among other things, about the importance of handwashing, adequate water storage, use of latrines or sanitation, and waste disposal.

  • STEPS TOWARDS HEALTH

    Our first step was to bring drinking water directly to the homes of 50 families. Along with the community, we built a Mini-Aqueduct by Electric Pumping (MABE, for its acronym in Spanish) that includes a system of chlorination. At the same time, we installed public water stations so that families who were not part of this first phase also had access to the resource.

    In addition to meeting the need for water, we made it possible for more than 70% of families to understand the effects of hygiene on their health, and the importance of the efficient use of the resource.