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HANWASH
Providing clean water is one of Rotary's major goals. Rotary has started one of the major Water, Sanitation, and Health (WASH) projects in Haiti. It is known as HANWASH, and our district (6290) has been working with this project since the pilot.
Some of the challenges include the following: Haiti receives less rainfall than the Dominican Republic on the other side of the island, Half of the water infrastructure is non-functional, Frequent earthquakes move underground water sources and destroy pumping equipment, and there is little data gathering about where water exists or where it is needed.
Our district has partnered with the commune (like a county) of Terre-Neuve. The Haitian Rotarians are working to produce community action plans for the water distribution. The World Bank did geologic surveys in this area but cancelled their project in 2017. Our engineering firm has been working with this data that showed 6 possible drilling sites. However, there are only 2 viable sites at this time.
We are hoping to start the drilling on one of these sites soon. Drilling must be done slowly to make sure the water deposit is not breached by the drill and the water escapes. Gangs control the area around where drilling will be done, so some method must be devised to get equipment past the gangs. The location is remote, and if water is found, there will need to be a plan for transporting it to the population centers.