By Andrew Sinclair | Development Director
Looking back at 2015 it was very encouraging to see the first 70 WaterWheels shipped to Rajasthan and the launch of the pilot project at the beginning of May. By September 68 families had signed up to have a WaterWheel.
We were also very grateful to be awarded a Community Development Grant for the WaterWheel project through Global Giving UK at the end of 2015. This will allow us to invest in more WaterWheels for the project in 2016. We are now is a much better position to work with our partner in India as they plan for a wider "roll out" for the project in other locations.
30 more WaterWheels were sent to Rajasthan in December 2015, this completed the first 100 for which we had initially raised funds. After much discussion it was decided to focus on expanding the project in the current area. The regional coordinator visited Rajasthan at the end of the first week in January to meet up with the Community Worker responsible for the project. Programmes were held in two different locations to allow families to sign up to be part of the project and receive a WaterWheel. We are waiting for confirmation of the details but it seems that the 30 WaterWheels sent in December have now all been distributed.
We will be bringing back two WaterWheels to the UK to help promote the project further here. We had hoped to have someone running the London Marathon with a WaterWheel in April 2016 for RED International. However we have just found out that this may not be allowed in the rules they have for this event. We will still be looking for lots of support for our runner, so watch this space!
We would also be happy for other groups to "borrow" a WaterWheel from us if they are holding events to promote the project. We hope to have the first WaterWheel back in the UK by the end of January.
Health and Hygiene Resources
At the same time the WaterWheel Pilot project was launched, we worked with our partner's Good Shepherd Heath Initiative team in India to produce two new packs of education resources focused on water sources, and using water. These will be used by their Community Health Workers (CHWs) to teach about the most fundamental need to human life; safe water to drink, to wash and to water animals and crops. Villagers learn how to identify safe and unsafe sources, how to improve the safety of their drinking water, about hygiene and sanitation. There is also a section on how using a WaterWheel can bring benefits in these areas.
These sets of resources are currently being reviewed so that further copies can be produced to be used by the CHWs in the health camps and clinics. These will be planned to take place alongside the introduction of the WaterWheels in new areas. The cost of these packs and the health camps are included as part of the launch costs for each new area.
We are also working with the Wello team in india to share experiences, and ideas regarding the collection of data to monitor the progress and impact of the project. In particular we want to understand how best to measure any health impacts or benefits on the families who are now using the WaterWheels.
Thank you again for your partnership and support of the WaterWheel project through 2015. We hope that you will continue with us on this journey as the project moves to a new phase in 2016.
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