Overview:
This project focuses on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programs in the troubled Rakhine State. With the backing of experienced partners, this project targets a population of 12,939, made up of 10 villages – 5 Muslim and 5 Buddhist – which have no access to clean water. It will work alongside peace-building activities in the area, which is being driven into deeper poverty and neglect by the military coup and COVD-19. 500 bio-sand filters will be made and distributed to families together with WASH training, delivering clean water for the first time to these areas. What an opportunity!
Why Support This:
Rakhine State is the poorest in Myanmar and receives the least development assistance, with almost half the state living below $1.60 per day, 75% having no electricity and 65% suffering from malnutrition. The focus on training locals in both the knowledge and the skills to continue to maintain and improve the water and sanitation infrastructure ensures not only that results will be sustainable, but outcomes will also improve over time. We like the well-considered approach our partners have taken to learn how to modify and improve the delivery of good community development projects before rolling out larger projects.
Budget:
Year 2 $26,990 (of a 2-year project totalling $53,600).
The Need:
The Rakhine State is the poorest state in Myanmar. It has suffered severely through inter-ethnic violence and continues to do so, particularly since August 2017 with the “ethnic cleansing” of the muslim Rohingya people into Bangladesh at the hands of the strongly Buddhist Myanmar government. Following the economic devastation of COVID-19 and the instability caused by the military coup in early 2021, thousands of families have been without salaries or work for months. This has led to high rates of food insecurity and growing levels of starvation as many have been forced to subsist on only grass and vegetation growing in nearby sewage. Myanmar also suffers from extreme weather events, with severe flooding in 2015, 2016 and 2017. Resources are very limited or non-existent. All of these combined make daily life extremely hard.
Expected Life Change:
