Developing healthier communities through education and empowerment

As the small Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan tries to improve the quality of life of its people, one of the greatest priorities is to improve hygiene standards and environmental sanitation. The lack of safe drinking water and poor sanitation contributes to widespread and recurring health problems, despite very good progress on overall poverty alleviation rate, including the provision of water supply schemes.

In 1974, the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation (RWSS) programme was initiated in Bhutan. From 1989 onwards, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, as a development partner of the Royal Government of Bhutan, has been providing technical assistance. Under this programme hundreds of water supply schemes were built in rural villages across the country. However, assessments made during the 1990s showed that 60% of the schemes built since 1974 were no longer functioning. In most cases this was due to a lack of ownership by the communities involved. In order to combat this lack of ownership, the Public Health Engineering (PHE) Division under the Ministry of Health of the Royal Government of Bhutan, with the assistance from SNV, designed several programmes to enhance community participation in and ownership of the schemes.