Older child holding younger child up to outdoor faucet.

Rotary – World Vision Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Project

Safe Water Honduras

In the spirit of improving the lives of the most vulnerable, please join Rotary in collaboration with World Vision in Safe Water Honduras, an $800,000 large-scale project to bring access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) to more than 16,000 families in Western Honduras.

Of the nearly 9.6 million people living in Honduras, 1.5 million lack access to clean, accessible water resources—1.2 million are from rural areas. Rural families lacking access to safe water consume water from streams or open wells—the same places where people bathe and wash clothes, and animals defecate—leading to diseases. Drought has lowered crop production and subsistence farmers have struggled to feed their families. Storms (such as hurricanes Eta and Iota) have destroyed water systems, which will take years for communities to regain quality access to water.

Rotary and World Vision look forward to another successful partnership in Safe Water Honduras, one that will change lives for children and families in Western Honduras. We invite your club to collaborate with us in a project that have an immeasurable return on investment. Click here for more information.

Mother and children at the river gathering water.

The goal of Safe Water Honduras is to significantly improve the health, literacy and well-being of 14,000 people through sustainable access to safe water. Additionally, we aim to benefit people with access to improved sanitation facilities through this project.

  • Construct approximately 1,500 water taps from gravity-fed and pumped water systems, including repair and improvement of the water source infrastructure, pipelines, storage tanks, and distribution networks with residential connections.
  • Construct water storage tanks in approximately 15 schools
  • Develop a safe water supply in approximately two health facilities including 20 water taps
  • Construct sanitation and hand-washing facilities at approximately 10 healthcare facilities
  • Train approximately 600 families on technologies to treat water at home
  • Build improved sanitation systems to benefit an estimated 150 families
  • Build or improve sanitation blocks, hand-washing facilities, and organize and train WASH clubs in approximately 10 schools
  • Train approximately 20 WASH committees with literacy and WASH

New and rehabilitated systems will include protection of the water source, pipelines to the community water tank, and distribution networks with household connections. Safe Water Honduras will include a pilot project to supply micro water meters in a subset of communities as funding permits, to promote the rationed use of water and fair fees for water services. Additionally, new water storage tanks will be installed in schools where existing infrastructure is not functioning properly. The new water delivery systems will do a great deal to protect woman and girls from their daily and often dangerous treks to acquire water. When the children are free from the work of fetching water, they benefit from increased time spent in their classrooms.

Safe Water Honduras will focus on the Western region of Honduras within the Ocotepeque department. Specifically, we will be targeting the municipalities of La Labor, Mercedes, San Francisco del Valle, and San Marcos.

As the world’s largest service organization, Rotary has unprecedented reach around the world to people committed to serving their communities. As the world’s largest non-governmental organization, World Vision works in nearly 100 countries with over 34,000 staff, with unprecedented reach into the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries.

Safe Water Honduras will be managed by the local Santa Rosa de Copan Club alongside the professional local World Vision staff on the ground who have been designing and working together on this project together. World Vision has agreed to match Rotary funds up to $400,000 for this critical project.

Rotary is leveraging the expertise and the donor funding to accomplish one of the largest and most professional WASH projects in Central America. Rotary Clubs and World Vision have been collaborating on projects since 2005 and invested in excess of $25 million in project funding, reaching over 3 million people worldwide.

Learn more about Rotary WASH here.

Learn more about World Vision here.