The people from Lekha village in Humla did not have access to clean drinking water. With the generous support of two donor organisations, RIDS-Nepal was able to start in 2011 the design and implementation of a "Family of 4" Holistic Community Development project in partnership with the Lekha community. The Village Drinking Water System (DWS) is one of the Family of 4 projects. The DWS utilises two different local springs, leading the water through 50 cm deep buried plastic pipe lines from the catchment areas down into the 6'000 liter Ferro-cement water storage tank. From there, underground pipe lines enable the water to flow to 4 different tap stands located in the village. The Lekha people are proud of their new DWS, as they have actively participated in each step of the project. They defined the two water sources, the pipe line path leading down to the village, they portered all the equipment to the village and dug hundreds of meters or trenches for the water pipe lines. They did all these jobs as part of their voluntary participatory work. Now the local people have access to sufficient clean drinking water near their home, minimising the water collection time for the women significantly. The project is a good example of a three party partnership between the local Lekha village community, RIDS-Nepal and the Nepal government office “Nepal Khanepani Tatha Dhal Nikas Sanstahn”, Humla. The DWS project is in the completion phase and once the operation and maintenance training for the local users has taken place the DWS is handed over to the Lekha people later in 2012.

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