RTI - Clean Water for Honduras

Every 10 seconds World Vision reaches one new person with clean water and one new person with handwashing behavior-change promotion.

Clean water frees children from deadly water-related diseases. It liberates women and children from a life spent gathering dirty water. It restores health and opens the door to education, a promising future, and a full life – the kind of life God intends.

Children in Honduras have to walk many miles every day to get water that makes them sick and keeps them locked in a cycle of illness.

Refined Technologies & CruzAlta are committed to ending this suffering by bringing clean water to vulnerable families.  We annually donate $1 million to World Vision’s Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) program in Honduras and rejoice that we have brought clean water to over 185,000 people over the past five years.  World Vision has an ambitious plan to help bring clean water to everyone, everywhere World Vision works by 2025 and RTI is excited to be a part of this.  We invite contractors to join us in bringing life, hope, and a future by giving directly to World Vision's water programming in Honduras. Every dollar given will be matched by Refined Technologies & Cruz Alta.  At only $106 a person, you can change a life and ensure families have hope at home.

Thank you for your partnership! You are making a difference.

THE ISSUE:

A VISION FOR CLEAN WATER

World Vision’s Global WASH Program helps to improve health, nutrition, and education outcomes through universal access to sustainable and safely managed water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services. Since clean water, dignified sanitation, and the ability to practice healthy hygiene behaviors are foundational to long-term well-being, World Vision and our partners are committed to reach everyone, everywhere we work, with water, sanitation, and hygiene by 2030.

WHY WASH IN HONDURAS?

About 9.6 million people live in Honduras, with 1.5 million lacking access to clean, more accessible water resources. Rural areas account for 1.2 million of that. Overall, almost two-thirds of Hondurans live in poverty. The Central American country ranks 132 of 189 on the 2019 United Nations Human Development Index. People migrate to escape gang violence, drug trafficking, one of the world’s highest murder rates, and to find economic opportunities.

Rural families lacking access to safe water consume water from streams or open wells—the same places where people bathe and wash clothes, and animals defecate—leading to diseases. Drought lowered crop production and subsistence farmers struggled to feed their families. Jose Luis Martin, a farmer in the Jamastran area program, once planned to leave Honduras “to have a future, for a better life for me and my family.” After the project discovered water in 2017, more than 600 community members tirelessly moved rocks and dug ditches for an irrigation system. With an opportunity to support his family, Martin changed his mind about migrating. He now employs up to 60 workers during harvest.

From 2016 through 2019, we have reached 143,935 people with safe water for better health and livelihoods

OUR APPROACH IN HONDURAS

Water Supply

In the majority of our water systems in Honduras, we protect and capture spring water at the source. Helped by gravity, we pipe water miles to large tanks that then serve household water taps. As we increase our installation of these systems, we help ensure equitable water access, reduce WASH-related diseases (such as diarrhea) and deaths, and improve child well-being.

Sanitation and Hygiene

Using evidence-based approaches, World Vision provides families with sanitation and hygiene education. And our behavior-change programming helps to tackle behaviors and attitudes opposing safe WASH. Families learn to construct and use household latrines and hand-washing stations to help prevent contamination of water sources and the spread of deadly diseases, including COVID-19, Ebola, and dysentery. We also work with the private sector to develop market-based solutions for latrine improvements, and construct latrines at schools and health centers.

WATER SECURITY AND RESILIENCE

World Vision’s approach to water security requires looking “beyond the pipe” to the broader integrity of ecosystems and catchments accompanied by the mitigation of water pollution. We support communities to develop mitigation plans to address water scarcity and conduct watershed management activities. We also equip families with tools to practice water conservation. Our plan for Honduras targets protecting 1,433 acres—the equivalent of 1,086 football fields—for watershed management. World Vision promotes improved management practices or technologies to protect, rehabilitate, or otherwise sustain the integrity of the ecosystem and associated hydrological systems within a defined catchment area. Examples of such practices may include tree planting and erosion control, land stabilization, and improved monitoring of forest and water resources.

GENDER AND INCLUSION

Our WASH work in Honduras aims to ensure access and empowerment for all. That includes equal representation of women on water management committees and girls in school WASH clubs so they can participate in decision making in their communities. It also means providing schools and health centers latrines that are equipped for menstrual hygiene management—helping to keep girls in school—and designed to serve people with limited mobility. We promote the inclusion of people with disabilities in our projects, drawing on their perspectives and considering their needs.

SUSTAINABILITY

World Vision’s long-term presence in countries and communities allows us to establish relationships with national, district, and local governments, other nongovernmental organizations, and community partners. We carefully and strategically cultivate these relationships to then form effective partnerships. Working collaboratively makes reaching everyone, everywhere with clean water a reality and ensures sustained WASH benefits far into the future.

“What I really like about World Vision, and why we’ve gotten more involved, is the holistic approach.  This is a development model that helps people develop physically, emotionally, and spiritually. World Vision launches an effort and lets the community drive it forward as their own.” (Cody Nath, President and CEO, Refined Technologies)

REACHING THE MOST VULNERABLE

At World Vision, we work relentlessly so vulnerable children and their families have the opportunity to life in all of its fullness, including good health and protection from disease.

Join us to ensure bright futures for children in Honduras!

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