Project Proposals

Running Water Project for Mingzhu Village Project Manager: Lumo Tsering (Corine) Build a running water system for 40 households in Huadi village, the middle school in Rdo Sbis and the primary schools in Rdo Sbis Township. increasing access to water will in turn decrease women's workload, increase women and children's free time, and decrease health problems in the village. Funds needed: $12, 431   (97,640 rmb)

Lumo Tsering (Corine)
Lumo Tsering is from Xunhua County, Haidong Region, Qinghai Province, China. She is currently working towards an associated degree in English at the Qinghai Normal University Nationalities Department English Training Program.

Project location:
Huadi Village (called Minzhu in Chinese) is the neighbor of Rdo Sbis Township, which is about 30 kilometers from Xunhua County Town in the southwest of Xunhua County. Xunhua is situated in Haidong Region, Qinghai Province, China. Huadi village is one of a few small villages that together make up a big village called Gule. The other small villages are Shang Gule and Xia Gule. All the people in this area are Tibetan. 

Population   
There are approximately 170 people in Huadi village. There are 65 women and 61 men. 44 children make up the rest of the village population. 

Education   
In this village ten percent of the people are literate (not including students). Nine out of this ten percent of literate villagers are older men. These men were monks when they were young and learned how to write and read Tibetan at the monastery. Now they have wives and families of their own. In the village there are seven university students, six high school students, six middle school students and ten primary school students. There are about 20 school-aged children in the village. On average, one child in each family currently attends school. Some families do not want to send their children to school. They think it is a waste of money and time, as their children will not be able to find a job in the future, so they take their children with them to earn money.  

Cash Income  
All of the villagers in Huadi village are farmers who grow barley, wheat and potatoes on their land. Rich families who own eight mu (1 mu = 0.0666 hectares) can sell their excess barley and earn about 800 RMB each year. However, most families only have one or two mu of land, which is only enough for them to live off of, and certainly not enough for them to make extra income.

A second way that villagers earn money is from livestock, as each family usually owns one cow. From the cow's milk, villagers produce butter and cheese to generate extra income. Because people do not eat butter or cheese very often, most of it can be sold. A family can earn about 600-800 RMB per year by selling butter and cheese. Most households can make about 25 to 30 jin (12-15 kgm) of butter and 30 jin (15 kgm) of cheese each year.    

The third way of generating cash income is as migrant laborers. Adults who are able to work do this. They usually dig caterpillar fungus, which is very difficult to find. Each caterpillar fungus can sell for around 10 to15 RMB. People usually go to dig the fungus at the beginning of May and come back home in the middle of June. During good seasons, each person can earn about 2000-3000 RMB. But good season s happen less and less frequently. All money earned in this way is spent on children who attend school and family costs such as New Year festivities. In one year, people spend about 1000 RMB on food and 500 on the clothes. In one month a household will spend another 100RMB on electricity and other essentials. In the summer villagers need to buy fertilizer, which costs about 400-500RMB.

In total, the average family can make 3700 rmb in cash income per year, and they have to spend 3550 per year. This leaves the average family with 150 rmb extra money left over each year. If the family has student who are going to university then they need to borrow money from others to afford their tuition.

Agriculture   
Huadi village is the smallest village within Gule village. Villagers do not have many fields, and usually two or three households share about 8 mu of land between them. Together they can earn about 800 rbm per year by selling their excess barley. Most families, however, can barley grow enough barley to support themselves. One mu of agricultural land can produce around 700-800 jin (350-400kg) of barley.  

Herding   
All of the villagers in Huadi village are farmers and each family has an average of five animals - one donkey, one cow, one pig, one horse and one goat . With the exception of the pig, these animals are used for milking and working, not for eating.  As stated previously, villagers can sell butter and cheese and each family can earn about 600-800 RMB per year, depending on how much butter and cheese a family can save. This money is used to buy everyday essentials, such as medicine and salt.

Project Goal:

The immediate goal of this project is to build a running water system for 40 households in Huadi village, the middle school in Rdo Sbis and the primary schools in Rdo Sbis Township .  

Problems:
Not enough water for villagers
The water piping that the villagers currently use does not belong to Huadi village itself. The system was funded by the government to supply Rdo Sbis Middle school with water 20 years ago. In Rdo Sbis Middle school there are about 650 students and 25 teachers. When there is not much water (which happens often), every class takes their turn to go to the spring (about two kilometers away from the school) with a big vat. As the school's needs have highest priority, the government funded the school's water system, knowing that the village adjacent to the school could also use the water supply. Previously the villagers had obtained water from a spring, which is about three kilometer from the village. The piped system at the school comes from another spring, three kilometers away. This spring belongs to Shang Gelu Village. People in and around Shang Gelu Village sometimes use the spring water to irrigate their fields, which results in water shortages for our village.

Another school called Rdo Sbis Center Primary School was built eight years ago, and is also using the same water system. There are 320 students and 20 teachers in that school and it is situated about 300 meters to the north of Rdo Sbis Middle School. Students walk from the primary school to the middle school in pairs to fetch water.   

L ack of reliable water supply
Every year during the harvest time, the water flow from the pipe system becomes unreliable, due to weeds that clog the ditch where the water flows. During this time villagers need to choose one person from each family to fetch water. The ditch often dries up, overflows and gets clogged unless villager to go to fix it. However, in this time the villagers are very busy and so these problems go unchecked for about three months. Because villagers are working so hard at harvesting, the water carrier must fetch four or five times the usual amount of water. The absence of one harvester is keenly felt, and all the other workers must struggle to work with extra effort. Lately the water flow has almost slowed to a stop. As mentioned previously, that is because weeds and debris are clogging up the ditch. The amount of water coming from the pipe is so small that villagers must wait or 30 or 40 minutes to fill their small pails .

Dangerous frozen Ground
During the wintertime, the ground around the water pipe outlet freezes into thick, slippery ice. Fetching water thus becomes a dangerous task, especially for young children or older villagers who fetch water . Although nobody has been seriously injured yet, minor injuries are common.

Increased women's labor
When the water flow is very slow, villagers travel about two kilometers to a spring or to another village ' s pipe system to collect water. Alternatively, they can walk to another village that is about 1 kilometer from our village to get water. Women usually go to fetch water at sunset and they must cook when they get home, so they do not have time to finish their chores or rest

Time consuming
When the water flow stops, the students must then spend their rest time fetching water from the spring, which is about two kilometers from the school. This uses up their valuable leisure time, which could otherwise be spent studying or playing. 

Health problems
Because fetching water is such a difficult task, people use their water very sparingly. This affects levels of health and hygiene in the village, as families do not wash their clothes and houses often. As the water is hard to get, villagers don't irrigate the vegetables in their house with clean water and they usually irrigate the vegetables with the dirty water, which is easy to get, so they vegetables are not very healthy.   

Benefits:
If we build a running water system that will pout a tap in every household, then there will be enough water for all of the villagers and several of the villagers' problems will be solved:

• Everyone in the village will have easy access to water, which is essential to their lives in myriad ways

• All of a family's members can fully participate in the harvest and finish it more efficiently. In my own experience during the harvest time even one little child is very useful. Therefore, if all the family members could attend to the harvest, then the task would be less laborious for all involved.

• The villagers and the students will not need to worry about slipping on the freezing ground around the pipe in winter. Children and the elderly will especially benefit from this rise in safety levels.

•  Women in the villagers will not need to walk long distances to fetch water and they will have more time spend on leisure or income generation. 

• The students won't need to spend their rest time fetching water; they can do other activities like study and play basketball.

• Villagers will use water to wash their clothes or house more often, so it will be better for their heath and personal hygiene. They will also be able to irrigate the vegetable plots in their family homes more often, thus having access to healthier, fresher food .

Beneficiaries
This running water project will benefit approximately 1,300 people, including the people in my village and the students in both schools. Also the people who are living beside the village—restaurant and shop owners will benefit because the village is located beside the Township and they all are using the water tap that our village is using

Gender equality 
The project will be implemented and managed by the villagers in Huadi village. It will benefit mostly women, because in my hometown women do most of housework, including fetching water. Also t he reason why there are both men and women overseeing the project is to let women participate , overseeing this project will train them to be more active because water is their concern. Moreover, their involvement in this project can be a first step for women's greater involvement in village affairs and it will raise women's position in the village. Currently, women's capabilities go unnoticed because they don't participate in village affairs. So this time as they participate it might be difficult for them as they lack of management experience, but it's a good chance for them to show their ability.

Government Approval  
The local government asked the villagers to do a water project last year, but neither the villagers nor the government has the money to carry out a project like this. If we can secure funding for this project, the government will support it wholeheartedly because they really want this project to happen.

The Steps of Project

• Discuss the problems of accessing water with the villagers, and decide what can be done to alleviate these problems. (Done)

• Talk with village leader about the community's most essential needs and how the water problem can be solved. (Done)

• Collect information about and for the project. (Done)

• Get official permission to carry out the project from our county leader. The leader has already asked us to rebuild the pipe system last year, but because of lack of money our village still didn't do it.

• Talk to other project managers and workers who have experience working on this type of project. Discuss with them about what kinds of materials are needed. (Done)

• Figure out the price of materials in Xunhua County. (Done)

• Hold a meeting with villagers and ask three women and two men to be responsible for the materials, to supervise the condition of the water spring and ditch system. One woman will take care of the materials, one woman and one man are in charge of the spring, and the other man and woman are responsible for the water ditch. (Done)

• A skilled worker called Tselo who had done this kind of project in other villages studies the ground to find out the best place where the new water system should be built. (Done)

• Take pictures of the current local conditions. (Done)

• Write project proposal. (Done)

• Funds are received.

• Hold a meeting with the villagers to discuss the start date of the project.

• Meet the contractors, Jiaobatai and Naizhi, to arrange when and how the villagers will prepare the sand and stones, and also the ditch where the pipe goes.

• Purchase materials such as cement and bricks from Xunhua County and have the five responsible villagers begin overseeing the project construction.

• Oversee the participation of the villagers until the project is completed.

• Interview the villagers to gage the success of the project.

• Take pictures of the project after its completion.

• Send final report to donor.

Detailed Budget*:

Total Donor contribution in RMB,= 97,640—in dollars=$12, 431

  * These prices are based on the costs of two running water projects that were done ion neighboring villages ion the last year. Our village leader, who was ion charge of one of these running water projects supplied information for the data below

Sustainability  
Because there will be five local villagers implementing the project, it will remain sustainable and also we have a care taking committee after the project is implemented . All the villages will have a vested interest in the long-term success of the project because they will have helped to build and care for the system. By using local suppliers of materials, the villagers are confident that the quality is very high. The suppliers have also guaranteed a return policy: for at least ten years we can return or exchange faulty parts. Also a man from our village called Tsering Dorji is very experienced at maintaining and repairing running water systems. He has been in charge of fixing the current system since it was built.