Hygiene education has been promoted through a pilot project called Healthy School and Healthy House, which started in 1996. All beneficiary communities and Water Boards receive assistance and training through primary schools, street cleaning and garbage collection, cleaning and community improvements. Once the members, now called Family Visitors, have been trained, they are responsible for individual visits to a specific number of families, a set number of times. Issues Addressed Freshwater, Education, Capacity Building. If it is successful the project can be replicated in other peri-urban communities where the UEBD is developing water and sanitation projects.
Women often take the initiative.
Additionally, it has to provide manual labour and some construction materials, and financially contribute through water tariffs and recover the full investment cost. The community must establish a Water Board to collect tariffs, administer the water system and take care of the operation and simple maintenance activities. The cost-recovery system recovers the whole investment, maintaining the fund to enable other communities to develop water and sanitation systems and expand the programme s coverage. The programme is one of the few examples in Honduras in which investment costs are recovered and will eventually become the owner of the water system. The Water Boards often were the first type of organisation to achieve improvements for the community.