Increasing sustainable access to safe water, sanitation and culturally appropriate hygiene practices to the most vulnerable displaced and disaster-affected women, girls, boys and men in Dinsoor District This proposed action aims at increasing sustainable access to wash services for the most vulnerable population in Diinsor District. The action is in line with the SHF reserve allocation 2019 hence targeting one of the most undeserved communities in hard to reach areas as prioritized by the call for proposals. Specifically, the project will enable INTERSOS to fill the WASH gaps through provision of sustainable WASH assistance package including innovative solutions that can contribute to durable solutions. 

The overall objective of this response is to provide Sustainable life-saving WASH services to the most vulnerable in Diinsoor district to improve access to safe and sustained water and hygiene educations, reduce acute watery diarrhea AWD/cholera incidences and WASH related diseases through Drilling and equipping of one strategic borehole with solar-diesel hybrid pumping system that will help in lowering the cost of system operation and more importantly lower emission of carbon footprint. Hydrogeological survey will be conducted in Dinsoor town to identify the suitability of ground water. Complete water distribution networks with elevated tanks and water consumption points (water kiosks) will be installed and constructed as per the available designs and BOQs. All water construction works will be constructed through service contracts with reputable water infrastructure companies who will be supervised by INTERSOS Engineer based in Diinsor. INTERSOS will employ local specialised manpower in order to rehabilitate and develop 11 existing shallow-wells through construction and raising of concrete aprons, de-silting to increase the yield of the wells, India mark 2 water pumps will be installed to ease fetching, watering trough will be built to separate the human consumption from livestock water consumption. 

Moreover, INTERSOS will introduce manual drilling of wells that are located in the water bed of the water streams or seasonal with pvc pumps. 11 wells will be drilled using this innovative technic. 3 local technicians will be trained and will be given materials and tools to support the population and start a sustainable and profitable business. The safety of water will be guaranteed through water treatment at the water sources while training of water management committees will embed sustainability through improved operations and management and cost recovery measures, water quality monitoring at the source and household level and where necessary will provide remedial measures through awareness raising on safe water handling by regularly conducting sanitary surveys to suspected water sources to identify risk factors, treatment options like chlorination will be done during rehabilitation and development of these wells and boreholes. 

In addition, the project will address the sanitation and hygienic behavior among the target beneficiaries through hygiene promotion and provision of hygiene kits to 1000 households, distribution of water purification tablets to acute watery diarrhea AWD/cholera suspected homes, institutional hygiene promotion. Hygiene promotion will be built on people’s own knowledge of risk and disease prevention to promote positive health-seeking behaviour. 

INTERSOS is currently the only INGO present in Diinsor and the only humanitarian actor implementing wash programs in the District as described in the paragraph coordination and complementarities, majority of the sanitation activities will be conducted in the same targeted location through a project funded by the Italian Cooperation moreover, this project will contribute to a nutrition outcome since INTERSOS will enhance complementarities in the same area with an ongoing nutrition project funded by SHF (a scale up of the same project being discussed with UNICEF).

A total of 21800 (5,308 women, 5,376 men, 5,200 girls and 5,916 boys) are expected to benefit from this project action.