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Our
expertise for
access to drinking water
Véronique Lebourgeois works as a hydraulician
at SOLIDARITÉS' main office. In the following self-interview,
she evokes the different aspects of our action to provide
vulnerable populations with drinking water in emergency and
reconstruction situations :
 What
is my rôle?
I offer counselling, expertise and experience to our
field teams and I relay technical information between them.
What is the humanitarian approach to
the water issue?
First, we need to make people aware that water, because of
waterborne diseases, is the first cause of mortality in the
world. It is more a problem of quality than of quantity: insalubrity,
lack of sanitation and non-compliance with basic hygiene rules.
Accessibility is also a problem: in emergency situations,
we respond by implementing resources and facilities to provide
water in sufficient quantity (20 litres per day and per person):
supply by trucks, by bladders (flexible tanks) connected to
water booms. In reconstruction situations, we must consider
the local context and the management capacities of the population
when implementing adapted and sustainable solutions: traditional
wells, development of springs, gravity-fed networks, etc.
What is our approach?
To provide a response adapted to the needs of the populations,
the first teams arriving at the site follow the following
pattern:
1. We evaluate problems and needs,
and we establish a diagnosis of the situation as well as a
response strategy
2. We design the solutions to be
implemented by asking the crucial questions: What? How? How
long? How can we get the beneficiaries to participate? What
are the risks involved? What will be the impact of the programme?
How much does it cost? What should be done subsequently?
3. The programme is written out
according to definite rules with quality as well as quantity
objectives to be achieved, and in terms of health improvement
results for the beneficiaries. Thus we can monitor progress
and ensure, jointly with the institutional partner financing
the programme, that we are achieving the objectives designed
to improve the population's living conditions.
4. Once the financing has been
secured, the programme manager and the mission leader guarantee
that we fulfil our commitments to the populations, to the
financial backer and to our main office. The on-site team
as a whole is in charge of the technical, administrative and
logistical implementation of the programme.
For example:
In order to assist displaced populations victims of the Darfur
conflict, the programme objectives are the following:
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Execute drinking water drill holes, equipped
with hand or electric pumps
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Implement supply networks with water flowing
from these drill holes
-
Build latrines in displaced persons' camps
-
Sensitise families to hygiene, hand-washing...
-
In the case of cholera epidemics: we set
up teams in charge of water chlorination water in cans directly
at the water site
-
Manage the displaced families' camp (registration,
concertation, protection from violence...)
What competences do we use in our water
access programmes?
 To
execute our programmes, we call in technicians and engineers
operating in hydraulic, sanitation and environmental domains.
They must have a least one work experience in France and, preferably,
an experience in developing countries or in emergency situations.
In France, there is only one training programme specifically
adapted to humanitarian operations: the Institut Bioforce ("Bioforce
Development Institute"), in Lyons, and its 4-month "TESSI"
(Sanitation Technician for International Solidarity) training
course.
A prior professional experience is indispensable to be sent
on a mission. Indeed, people in charge of a programme who are
on their first mission face many new responsibilities: team
management, technical expertise, decisions to make, compliance
with safety, logistics and budget management procedures.
Insecurity, stress, heavy workload, risks of corruption in
local contexts, collective living conditions, which are sometimes
rather spartan... This is the common fate of SOLIDARITÉS'
on-mission volunteers. Thus, the person will adapt all the better
to these new tasks and to a difficult context as he/she has
developed a sense of organisation and of teamwork during a prior
professional experience in France or abroad.
Prior technical training is indispensable if the person is
to be efficient and provide relevant and sustainable responses
to the population's vital needs. The competences most frequently
implemented on SOLIDARITÉS' fields of operation are the
following:
KNOW-HOW |
FIELD APPLICATION |
| Civil engineering |
Calculate concrete quantity take-offs, build latrines,
and a well.
Rehabilitate buildings. Verify the cost-estimates executed
by local technicians and local firms. |
| Hydraulic |
Perform measurements of the network and of the pumps,
calculate total energy head line, flow rates.
Rehabilitate infrastructure facilities
Choose the pumps. |
| Mechanics / Electricity |
Maintain pumps, generator sets, perform measurements
of solar systems, wind pumps. |
| Hydro-geology |
Perform drillings, install wells
Evaluate pollution risks. |
| Drinking water treatment |
Set up a "simple" flocculation / decantation
/ chlorination water treatment chain
Rehabilitate the treatment station. |
| Sanitation |
Rehabilitate water sanitation networks
Waste Management. |
Practical applications that require experience acquired
on the field and reading specialised documents:
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Organising villagers and training them
to manage drinking water infrastructure facilities
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Waterborne diseases and sensitising
beneficiaries to hygiene rules
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Concertation and taking into account
local communities
-
International standards, operational
references (WHO, SPHERE...)
-
Building traditional wells, cemented
or not
-
-
-
-
Human waste treatment by families in
developing countries; what type of latrine? How to build
it?
-
-
Performing surveys on hygiene, water
use, waste management
Providing access to basic water / sanitation
services in a quality approach
Beyond extreme emergency situations where access to water is
a question of survival, the overall objective of a water-access
and sanitation programme is to reduce the sanitary risk in a
given population, mainly through actions aimed at decreasing
the impact of waterborne diseases related directly to hygiene
conditions.
In emergency situations, monitoring our operations also involves
different steps:
-
Technical follow-up by our main office
(validation of the proposed solutions)
-
Sanitary surveys performed with beneficiary
populations and satisfaction surveys
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Internal and external audits (administrative
and operational)
-
Compliance with "standards"
specified in the framework of emergency actions.
Last, "you don't only have to do the proper thing, you
must also do it properly", SOLIDARITÉS follows in
2006 a Quality method specifically designed for humanitarian
aid, adapted to the particular conditions and environment of
humanitarian action.
SOLIDARITÉS will use this method/tool according to a
set of instructions which, adequately executed, will enable
the Association to develop a genuine Quality approach in humanitarian
projects.
This Quality approach is based on two pillars: action steering
and evaluation. These two pilars are aimed at improving permanently
the quality of the assistance service we offer to the beneficiary
populations, thanks to the training of our teams and to the
improvement of their practice. This Quality approach, while
not intended to become a label, aims at enhancing the credibility
of our action and the trust we establish: downstream with our
beneficiaries, upstream with our donors and financial backers.
How does SOLIDARITÉS play an indispensable
role in providing access to drinking water?
Our programmes meet daily vital needs. In emergency situations,
we are most often the only operators around. In post-crisis
reconstruction situations, our projects stem from a genuine
concertation process involving beneficiary populations, the
entity managing the infrastructure facilities, local authorities
and ourselves – most frequently in the absence of efficient
public service actors and local firms. In such special contexts,
SOLIDARITÉS always seeks to implement innovative, low-cost
solutions based on renewable energies and resource protection.
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