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Background of the Problem
Water is a basic need and according to the United Nations access to it is also a human right. It is an essential part of daily life and in maintaining good health. Safe water is utilized by humans through sanitation, food production, and hydration. Unsafe drinking water can lead to so many serious health conditions and even death. Every year many people, most especially children, suffer from dehydration and electrolyte imbalances caused by diarrheal diseases. It might be an easily preventable problem, but still many people are seriously affected by this especially those living in poverty-stricken communities where water is considered a luxury. In these areas, water sources are usually communal or public and there is no purification method used for drinking water.
In Barangay Maras, there are a couple of different water sources used by the residents and most of them are communal and are not yet confirmed to be potable. The households situated near the highway get their drinking water from a dug wells with hand pump and a few would buy from the nearby water-refilling station. Some households are connected to the piped spring water system established by the Local Officials but the water is rationed and still limited. Along the highway, an average of 25-30 households share 1 water source. In the areas far from the main road, drinking water is taken from an open dug well or a protected spring. Purok Waling-Waling is the only purok that has no water source of its own and people would walk in distances even as far as 200 meters through dense grasslands and narrow roads on top of cliffs just to get water. In terms of water storage and purification, the residents utilize covered containers, which most of them clean regularly, but not all purify their drinking water.
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Solution
To manage these problems, approaches must be focused on changing the negative practices of the community, mobilize the people, and utilize available resources to improve the situation of the water sources.
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Sustainability
Community involvement is the best way to ascertain sustainability of the programs that will be implemented. All throughout the process, from the identification of the problem up to the evaluation of results, the people must be actively involved to instill the sense of ownership and cooperation in them. The local leaders must also be empowered so that they will be motivated to guide the people effectively and provide independent decisions in managing the projects.
swm update
JANUARY 2020 IMPLEMENTATION
As an environmental awareness rises, solid waste management schemes are increasingly being implemented all over the world. There is now even a 10 year national plan on combating improper solid waste management. however, when the leaders at the municipal or barangay level does nothing about it like due to a political war arising within their small municipality, wherein the major himself won't allot funds for a barangay level project due to the captain not being on his political party, or the barangay themselves hiding their improper ways through falsifying documents… then how else would we plan on fighting that? Well, accompanied with the people, despite knowing what they are supposed to do, are not planning on acting on it. Through the data we have collected, along with the people’s decision themselves on stating that it is a problem, we did make it a problem.
Despite those difficulties, here are some of the things we had done so far, since last July, due to the acknowledgement of the barangay captain that we have a problem and that they want it solve, recently this December, they have joined a cleanest barangay competition run by the municipal office and won 5th place indicating that they could do it if they wanted to, even if some of the council members were not moving, like a cart running on 3 wheels instead of four. Even the collection of the MRF was revived. So this January, we initiated on the formation of a core group on sanitation, they would be handling both the solid waste program and the water safety program. The group consisted of the barangay captain, the barangay secretary and treasurer, barangay kagawads, the heads of each school in Maras, the barangay nurse, and the barangay health workers. We tested them on their current baseline knowledge on SWM, knowing they would need it, they can’t mess up the information that would be reaching the people. Then we lectured them on the proper way how it is done. We did plan on placing information materials on different location in the barangay, in case the people forget what they learned, they would be able to go back to it and check for confirmation. To further enhance the outside state of the barangay, the council decided that a clean-up drive would be held monthly. Hopefully the constant reminder would help the people get what is proper into their system. We also ask funding from different NGOs asking for their help, and hoping they would.
January 2020 Accomplishments:
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Formation of MarAS core group
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Administer a pre-test and post-test to MARAS members and 1 purok assembly
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Presentation of problem to the MarAS with proposed solutions
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Conduction of Assembly on Solid Waste Management in the farthest purok
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IEC material placement within the barangay
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Conduction of Clean – up drive in coordination with the barangay council
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Revival of the MRF with Logged collection data
Upcoming Activities:
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Following the protocols of social distancing, wearing of face masks, disinfection, and limiting movement to only essentials in the context of COVID-19 New Normal Setting, the following upcoming activities are as follows:
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Identification of Barangay Waste through conducting a Waste Analysis Characterization Study (WACS) for each purok
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Lectures on SWM to remaining purok with administration of pre- test and post - test
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Formation of bulletin board on SWM
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Endorsement of a revised barangay ordinance on solid waste
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Lectures in schools on SWM
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Identification of partnership with junkshops
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