In the UK we each use about 150 litres of water a day without even thinking about it. It’s available, it’s clean, it’s safe. But not everyone is so fortunate. Less than 50% of rural Ecuadorians have access to clean drinking water, yet 90% of all infectious disease in developing countries is caused by unhealthy water.

Clean water is essential for good health. Everyday, at least 15,000 people die in developing countries due to diseases transmitted by water. Few rural Ecuadorian communities have convenient access to suitable quality drinking water.

What we do

HCJB Global Hands’ water projects facilitate communities in completing projects to improve their health. This is achieved through the installation of low cost appropriate water and sanitation infrastructure coupled with health and hygiene education programmes. We seek to employ Biblically based community development principles and we have not only a concern for physical health but also spiritual health.

How we work

In each project, the benefiting communities bear significant responsibility for the resources to obtain clean water. In Chimborazo Province for example, where community development has had a long-term presence, the communities provide over 60% of the resources necessary to build their water systems and provide significant leadership.

HCJB Global Hands staff design the community water systems and national field technicians with whom we have a long-standing relationship, supervise construction. The field technicians are primarily employed and paid by the benefiting communities they serve. Design work includes, topographic survey, hydraulic design, spring protection/development structures and design of water storage structures. Community water systems may vary in size from 25 to 500 homes. The communities provide all of the unskilled and semi-skilled labour. This arrangement allows us to promote community unity, employ community development principles and to emphasize a Biblical perspective of development at all stages of the project.

Water projects have been undertaken in collaboration with a number of organisations. These include Water for People, Lifewater, Instituto Ecuatoriano de Obras Sanitarias (IEOS) which translates as the Ecuadorian Institute of Health Construction, the Swedish International Development Agency, the Canadian International Development Agency, Jersey Aid, and MAP International. In addition to working with the organisations mentioned, concerned individuals, churches and a variety of other interested organisations also provide funding.

Where we work

HCJB Global Hands have water project programmes in three areas of Ecuador: the highlands, the Pacific lowlands and the Ecuadorian Amazon. The first two areas have been benefiting from water projects for a number of years and to date almost 70 schemes have been completed. In the highlands efforts have focused primarily on communities in the Chimborazo province with a limited number of projects in other regions. Most projects are gravity flow water systems. Where this is not possible in recent years simple pumped water systems have been introduced where the communities prove themselves capable of operating and maintaining these systems. In the Pacific coastal lowlands over 100 wells have been constructed and we are beginning to construct a number of gravity or basic pumped water systems.

The Ecuadorian Amazon jungle is a relatively new venture which began in 2003. To date, they have helped hand-dig a well, protect a number of springs and work in collaboration with the local municipality to repair and improve the water system in Makuma, a jungle community of 100 families. The jungle communities present a new range of problems that need solving as all the materials and personnel need to fit into small 5-seater airplanes operated by MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship). The programme is starting with small projects to form ‘model communities’ and hold workshops on sanitation, hygiene and water treatment while local technicians are trained and experimentation takes place into which designs work best in this difficult terrain.

In 2009 the impact of our water projects expanded beyond Ecuador, as we worked with one of our partners to dig a new well for a community in Ghana.