So, you have a regional water crisis. What do you do? Do you get millions of dollars in donations and install wells around the country? Do you distribute water? Or do you empower the people to get access to clean water?
WaterCredit, an initiative of WaterPartners of water.org, aims to do the last. Instead of taking the conventional method of "emergency last-minute aid" (eg. outsiders drilling wells, distribution of water as a stopgap), WaterCredit aims to alleviate the problems by providing the people with microcredit loans to drill wells and to make other water improvements. According to the program, microcredit helps give residents a "
WaterCredit loans empower the poor to address their own water needs, on their own timetable. [A] sense of ownership... that makes them more responsible for their wells and also increases water security. Also, by establishing creditworthiness, the poor are able to take out additional loans from commercial lenders." If you'd like to read more, check out their well-written
FAQ.
However—and this is crucial—WaterCredit doesn't just cover water. They also cover local sanitation, often a problem that goes hand in hand with water security. As evidenced by the situation in London, water crises often cause a cascade effect. In developed areas, sanitation can fail and can cause disease outbreaks and water supply contamination. In underdeveloped areas, the sanitation situation is practically nonexistent. Farmers' fields might leech into the local water supply, or waste in the streets might contaminate collected water. WaterCredit also provides financing for latrines, outhouses, and community sanitation services that can help with this.
So, why did I choose to write about WaterCredit, considering all of the other myriad and wonderful ways to deal with water problems? My main reason was because their microlending project takes something to heart that all of us here at EVOKE should consider: empowerment, not pity. Too many a foreign aid project has taken the form of "Yikes, that looks pretty horrible. We'll try to fix it by jetting in some workers and throwing money at it and not really involving you much in the process." WaterCredit (and, by extension, most microcredit) takes the "empowerment, not pity" angle. Change from the ground up will always be more effective than change sideloaded in without any input from the people who it's actually effecting. Again, the sense of ownership means a lot.
"Current financing models that dominate the water supply and sanitation sector are not scalable because they rely almost exclusively on philanthropy and subsidies. Simply advocating for increased aid is not enough."
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