Community

Shahpura village, India and El Chaparral, Nicaragua

BAC currently partner with Just a Drop to raise money for projects.

The Shahpura Village is located in the Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh, India with a population of 230 people. The area around the village has a history of frequent droughts, leading to drinking water shortages for the community, the animals and the crops.
Currently, the community rely on an open well located 3-5 hours from the village. The water is unsafe to drink due to its lack of cover. The entire population has to walk to collect water, but it often falls on women and girls to spend hours to collect drinking water and also water used for household activities. The water makes people ill and in the village, the levels of hygiene are very low, compounding the situation.

To meet the needs of the village, BAC together with Just a Drop will implement the following:

• Construct a 90-meter deep well, giving the community access to safe water, and a tank
• Construct a pump house to distribute the water through a piped system to each village household – water is accessed on a household level through a tap
• Provide 2 families with model toilets and rehabilitate 25 existing government toilets
• Refurbish the school sanitation blocks, provide water to the school and build a handwashing platform
• Train the community in the importance of hygienic practices

El Chaparral is located 11km northeast of the town of El Sauce, in the Department of El Sauce, Nicaragua, and is home to 147 people. The residents of El Chaparral are mainly subsistence farmers, some raise animals and others have small gardens. Houses there are made of adobe or brick with tile or zinc sheet roofs and the floors are dirt.

The water situation in the village is fairly bleak. There are currently two existing wells, but the water there is contaminated, in one, the water is yellow colored. The community drink this water, leading to high incidences of illness. People spend hours each day fetching this water from the wells to their homes – 11 trips in the morning and 5 in the afternoon.

To meet the needs of the village, BAC together with Just a Drop will implement the following:

• Provide the new 60-meter well, which was built last year, with an electric pump, to take the water to an 11,000-liter concrete tank
• Construct a 7 km pipeline, taking water from the tank to each individual household in the village and to the school – each household will get their water through a tap in their backyard
• Provide hygiene education