“With only $1 million per year from the Canadian International Development Agency, the water and sanitation project has relied on the commitment of local partners from the beginning.”

The World University Service of Canada has helped provide improved access to clean water and sanitation for more than 1.2 million Peruvians, but an even greater legacy emerging from the 25 year project is the organization’s participatory approach to planning and capacity building.

That was the message from Michel Tapiero, WUSC’s manager for Latin American and Middle Eastern projects, in a presentation he made to a small group of Trent students on Friday, March 14 during the Trent WUSC committee’s World Water Day symposium.

“If you can’t get the locals to buy in to the project, then forget it,” Tapiero said. “You’ll leave the project and come back a year later, and nothing will have been done.”

In 23 communities throughout the coastal areas and arid Andean highlands of the South American country, WUSC helped educate people on safe water use at home while also expanding access to water for low income people in small communities and in the growing urban periphery of major cities like Lima.

The level of engineering work required was often quite simple, Tapiero said, but even these basic interventions have made substantial changes. In the Andean community of San Marcos, the WUSC project provided clean water and sanitation for the local primary school and later testing found an 80 per cent reduction in the levels of disease-causing bacteria present in the children’s systems.

Working with only $1 million per year from the Canadian International Development Agency, the water and sanitation project has relied on the commitment of local partners from the beginning. By contributing a certain percentage of the cost of the project, usually through in-kind labour, the local communities become directly invested in the project’s success from the outset. By paying attention to the needs and desires of the people meant to benefit from WUSC’s activities in Peru, Tapiero is confident the effects of his organization’s work will continue to be felt into the future.

“Education is an important part of the program. You have to have the grassroots project in order to make it sustainable.”

The education that Tapiero spoke of cuts both ways, he said. Prior to taking up his current position with WUSC five years ago, Tapiero had extensive experience in the volunteer sector in neighbouring Bolivia.

“You can’t approach it as going to another country to help,” he said. “You’re there to share your knowledge and see what the people need, and you’ll learn even more than you thought.”

It hasn’t been all smooth sailing for WUSC in Peru, Tapiero acknowledged, recounting an incident where the project employees installed over 400 water meters in one community, only to find them all removed or destroyed within days. People were suspicious of the concept of monitors on water use, but as the bills began to arrive, most metered households actually saved money, Tapiero said.

WUSC’s work in Peru was meant to have finished in 2007, with the organization donating boxes worth of documents to Peru’s National Library to provide resources for other community-based project work. However, a recent renewal of funding for at least one more year has Tapiero talking about the possibilities of extending the participatory approach to other areas managed by local-level government in Peru.