Winter 2025

Measuring the Impact of Our Programs

One of our most well-appreciated community development programs is our Water and Sanitation Program, started in 2013. We have 24 volunteer Community Promoters from 12 communities doing water and hygiene education in their communities and helping people build ventilated pit latrines for sanitation. To date, we’ve helped nearly 700 families build latrines and we’ve capped 4 underground springs, providing thousands of rural Haitians with potable water for drinking. Every year, we’re asked by more and more communities to train Promoters for them. They’re hungry for the education but they especially would like to have latrines!

Before moving forward to train even more Promoters, we decided it would be good to try to assess the actual impact of the program, in terms of water and hygiene knowledge and actual practices, and see if there is a difference in the behaviors and attitudes of those with access to education and those without.

24 Communities Surveyed

The teams visited more than 40 homes in each of 24 communities, making close to 1000 total visits. We’re in the processof scanning all the survey sheets so they can be sent to graduate nursing students at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing(JHSON) for data processing and statistical analysis. We appreciate the virtual help we’re getting from JHSON becausethey have been partners of ours in this program since its inception. Since teams of nursing students are unable to come visit us in Haiti due to security concerns, we were thrilled to have them offer to work with us online instead, helping us withthis project and continuing with this valuable partnership.

Makeshift latrine consisting of a hole in the ground covered by planks.

2 teams of 2 went into each of the 24 communities for 4 days, visiting 5-6 houses each day.

Team asking questions and filling out the survey form in a rural household

5-gallon jugs of water sit on a porch. It takes some families up to an hour to fetch water and bring it home and they do it several times each day.

Initial Conclusions

At a recent follow-up meeting with our Promoters, we came to the following initial conclusions:

The Promoters felt that doing the survey was a very valuable experience for them. Some of them visited communities they had never been to before and their eyes were opened to conditions in other parts of the country. As one Promoter stated, “I’ve heard people say Haiti is in bad shape but now I’ve seen it with my own eyes” (regarding the poverty and lack of material goods).
There were definitely differences in hygiene and sanitation knowledge and practice in communities with our Promoters compared to those communities without Promoters. What the Promoters are teaching is actually being put into practice. In addition, there were many more latrines in the Promoter communities, thanks to our efforts in helping build them. It was obvious that lack of resources is a huge barrier to improved sanitation in rural areas.
People in communities where there is no water and hygiene education are very thirsty for knowledge and many of them said they would appreciate being taught ways to live healthier lives. In response to this knowledge deficit, we are planning to expand the areas of education to neighboring communities and eventually help them build latrines also.

Getting feedback from the Promoters about their survey experience.

Reviewing the training manual used by the promoters for community water and hygiene teaching

Once the survey results are finalized, we expect to revise the questionnaire to better capture the knowledge and practice of rural Haitians regarding water, hygiene and sanitation. We will then use it as a tool to periodically assess the impact of the Water and Sanitation Program on an ongoing basis.