Episcopal Relief and Development is keeping families healthy and preventing diseases in Nicaragua.  Through a partnership with El Porvenir, a community-based water and sanitation group, ERD is providing clean water, improving sanitary conditions, and providing hygiene instruction to rural Nicaraguans.

ERD has helped more than 130 families in several villages to construct wells and latrines.  ERD is also changing unhealthy behavior: teaching people how to chlorinate their water, wash their hands, and cover their water barrels (where malaria-spreading mosquitoes can breed).

The Blandon Family
One of the villages where ERD is working is Bijagua, where the Blandon family lives.  The family is made up of Juan Francisco Blandon, Juana Marin, and their five children, who range in age from 7 to 19.  This family of farmers benefited from a latrine, a source of clean water in their home, and hygiene instruction.

Just a few years ago, the village of Bijagua lacked a sanitation system to dispose of human waste, and the source of the village’s water was a stream located ten minutes away.  Villagers had to carry their water from the stream daily, in buckets; a family like the Blandons had to make many trips per day.  Their daughter, Gioconda, spent so much time hauling water that she began to fall behind in her school work.  She often had to wait in line at the stream before she could fill her buckets.  “I always worried about her walking down there alone in the dark of the early mornings and evenings,” said her mother, Juana, adding “there are poisonous snakes here.”

Villagers and livestock used the stream to bathe; and women washed their laundry at its banks.  Strained by overuse, Bijagua’s drinking water became contaminated.  The children began to suffer from chronic diarrhea.  Moreover, when it didn’t rain enough, the stream would dry up, leaving the village with no water at all.

ERD helps villagers build latrines first, to keep their waste from contaminating the water.  “They taught us how to build and use a sealed pit latrine, and gave us materials to build one at our house,” said Juana Marin. 

Next, ERD helped the people of Bijagua to build a water supply system.  “The whole village contributed to buy a piece of land where we built a stream capture,” recalled Juana.  “We trenched and dug and helped build all of the components for the distribution system.  From El Porvenir, we learned to fence in and plant tress and plants around the stream capture to keep it productive and from being contaminated by animals.”  Educators taught the villagers to chlorinate water and conserve it, and to operate and repair the various components of the system.

Juana summed up the effect the project has had on her family: “the project was incredible for us.  We love having a reliable source of water that is clean, and that we know won’t make us sick or leave us with no water without warning.  The children don’t have diarrhea anymore.”  Now that their daughter Gioconda doesn’t have to spend hours every day hauling water, she is excelling in school and looks forward to getting a good job.