Thousands of people in Nga Truong commune, Nga Son district, Thanh Hoa province have clean water to use

For many years, Mr. Tran Van Long, chairman of Nga Truong, Nga Son District, Thanh Chemistry province as well as all the people in the commune must use rainwater or well-processed water wells for the purpose of living and dining. At school, students must use bottled water without quality assurance. Long found that the use of unsecured water can cause a lot of harm to both physical and mental, people using rainwater or bottled water are also not sustainable solutions. Since 2018, Thanh Hoa Province has advocated investment in building water supply systems for communes, however construction projects have encountered difficulties in deploying and risk not to be perfected due to various causes especially due to lack of support and capital to build. To contribute to solving the above difficulties, from 2019, the project “Vietnam local activities for environmental health” – Local Works, under the sponsorship of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), coordinated with the local authorities, Thanh Hoa Province mobilized the participation to create a multi-modal cooperative relationship to mobilize and mobilization resources. The project has supported the search for capital and the help of local agencies from provincial level to the commune level, besides the project also deployed media campaigns to entice community attention, which promotes the implementation of the project is more rapid. With the results of the advocacy, the mobilization of resources of local organizations and the Russian people’s schools, the total capital of the deposit project was about 161,000 USD equivalent to more than VND 3.5 billion.  The clean water supply system was built and officially handed over to the Russian villagers on 27 May 2020. This clean water supply not only helps Mr. Long and the family have clean water to use, but also helps the entire Russian villagers with more than 4,300 people, including 758 students and teachers from 3 school points of the commune, helping to ensure the health and lives of everyone. “Now people have been very reassured about the water supply. The support project is a very excited person, as water is an input, involving human health. Especially in preschool, old days to buy food, the water source, now assured “, Mr. Long shared.

Mr. Long is one of thousands of Russian residents in the field to benefit from the project “Local activities in Vietnam for environmental health”, which is performed by the Institute for Population, Health and development (PHAD). Not only in the Russian school, the project has been deployed in many other areas to improve access to clean water for people in disadvantaged areas, e.g. in Yen son commune, Ha Trung district, Thanh Chemical Province. Here, the project coordinates with local authorities, social organizations and locals, supporting and constructing 05 clean water supply systems for 04 School locations and 01 residential clusters. With support from the project, these results are a testimony to expanding local partnerships, strengthening resource mobilization and enhancing local support to help effectively address and sustainably challenge the access to clean water in rural areas with many difficulties in Thanh chemistry. The project also promotes a multi-modal collaborative model to address issues relating to water and health capable of scaling out many provinces of the country.