“Sometimes two days went by and we would only have water for an hour,” said Dunia Rojas, who was elected the mayor of Arani, Bolivia, in 2015.
“Now we have water 24 hours a day, it’s clean and healthy water,” and every community in her district has a reliable source.
Water For People, a Denver-based nonprofit, helped Arani in central Bolivia, along with the Cuchumuela and San Pedro districts in the South American country, under its program called Everyone Forever to deliver drinking water and sanitation services to communities.
“Water is something that we take for granted here in the United States.
It’s difficult to imagine what our lives would be like if we didn’t have that service.” The group is an offshoot of the American Water Works Association, which focused on managing and treating water in the U.S. and Canada, explained Mark Duey, Water For People’s chief programs officer.
After receiving numerous requests for similar help in other countries, AWWA created Water For People in 1991 to handle those requests.
As it got started, the group was working on a project-by-project approach without much strategy, he said.
The partnership also requires monitoring the water and sanitation systems, done through an Android data-collection app called “Flow.” In 2017, San Pedro was the first district in Bolivia to achieve universal access, where every family, school and health center had adequate drinking water and sanitation facilities.
Behind the wall, a well is collecting ground water and an electric pump is pushing that water into an elevated tank.
Photo courtesy of Water For People In addition to Bolivia, Water For People works with local partners in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi and India.