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 Benavides Family
One of the villages benefiting from ERD’s help is La Esperanza, where the Benavides family lives.  This farming family of four was able to make more improvements than they bargained for.

ERD’s educators visited the family’s village to discuss health and hygiene: “We were taught the importance of good hygiene and how it can prevent disease.  Before we built the latrine, they taught us to clean it every day and to wash our hands after using it and to keep its opening covered to keep out [disease-carrying] insects.”  The villagers learned to chlorinate and to conserve their water.

Next, ERD provided the materials to build pit latrines and fix the muddy, polluted community well.  Educators also showed the Benavides family how to build a fuel-efficient woodstove instead of cooking over an open fire.  The family took the lessons they had learned a step further: “We learned to plant tress and plants around the well to keep it productive and consequently have a fruit orchard.”

The orchard would not have been possible before the other community improvements: “It would not have been possible to have these trees at the rate we were cutting firewood before; but with the woodstove, we use much less fuel!”  The trees’ root systems, in turn, help to draw water into the well.

“Our tidy orchard is a model for many and has attracted much attention,” said the Benavides family.  “People from other communities come to see it and ask how we did it.  It makes us proud and makes us want to continue improving our community.”