East Meets West Foundation’s recent programme launched in September, Community Hygiene and Water – Women led Output-based aid project (WOBA) aims to reach 20,000 households with hygienic toilets and 8,000 poor and socially excluded households with clean piped water through funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and Australian Government.

At the launching ceremony. (Photo: PNVN)

On September 13, the new Women-led Output Based Aid (WOBA) project was launched in Vietnam.

Under this project, Thrive Networks – East Meets West, with about AUD 6 milion funding from the Australian Government, will work with the Vietnamese Women’s Union, the Ministry for Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of Health and provincial governments to deliver WOBA in Hoa Binh, Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Ha Tinh and Ben Tre. The project will ensure approximately 20,000 rural, low-income and marginalised households have improved access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene education.

WOBA will create meaningful gender empowerment outcomes through systematically engaging women as change agents in the sector and decision-makers in the household. WOBA will strengthen market development and revenue generation to further develop rural WASH markets – both through the variety of products available and the quality and sustainability of WASH service provision.

This program is part of a larger regional initiative, called ‘Water for Women’ in 17 countries. WOBA has a focus on ensuring gender equality and social inclusion in all activities undertaken in Vietnam from 2018 to 2022.

WOBA will institutionalize successful approaches for reaching rural, low-income and socially excluded households with improved access to clean water, safely managed sanitation, and hygiene. This will include with working with suppliers and local partners to make modifications to facilities to improve access for persons with disabilities.

WOBA will support the government to embed a targeted smart-subsidy program with provincial governments steadily increasing their co-financing of the approach, with purposefully targeting of households with persons with disabilities and other marginalized groups.

WOBA is one of 19 projects funded through the Australian Government’s Water for Women program, which will provide AUD 110.6 milion over five years to 16 countries across South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

East Meets West/Thrive Networks has been operating in Vietnam for 30 years and is one of the few non-governmental organizations in Vietnam focusing on rural water supply and sanitation. EMW has many high-impact programs and projects in the fields of health, clean water and sanitation, education and infrastructure for communities throughout Vietnam. To date, EMW has invested over USD120 million in Vietnam.

According to a World Bank study, children who have access to hygienic toilets are nearly four centimeters taller than their counterparts living in communities where public defecation is widely prevalent.

Relief International estimates nearly 300,000 children under the age of five die each year from diarrhea caused by dirty water and poor sanitation.

According to Nguyen Thi Lien Huong, director of the ministry’s Health Environment Management, poor hygiene increases the risk of disease and high costs of treatment. The World Bank estimates that Vietnam loses around VND16 trillion (USD 683 million) a year due to poor sanitation./.

VNF