- LATIN AMERICA
Who and
What are we talking about?
Lazos de Agua’s main characteristic is that it is a multisectorial program. Therefore, from the communities, engineers, expert implementation partners, government partners, artists and financial entities, plumbers, master builders, and local entrepreneurs, we have joined forces to address the problem of access to water and sanitation in the region.
Latin America has the highest per capita availability of fresh water, however, 7 of every 10 people do not have access to basic safe water services. services due to factors such as: inoperative infrastructure, limited human and economic resources, absence of the state, wastewater treatment, human pollution, droughts, climate change, oil spills and industrial agricultural wastes.
We are focused in working with communities in vulnerable conditions, rural, urban and peri-urban communities because we believe they are the most affected. The situation at the urban level is still a problem in many places, but at the rural level, today, we have the same rates as 25 years ago at the urban level, which means, we have a lot of work to do with, by and for these communities.
Before discovering the multitude of voices that are part of the program, discover from their own voices, the value of water for many of them.
In order to choose the intervention communities in each country, three main criteria must be met:
They should be located in
rural or peri-urban areas.
They should be classified in the
national indexes
as marginalized or
very highly marginalized communities.
They do not have any access to water or have a
very limited one (water only once a
week, for example).
As a result, the following regions were selected:
- Tumaco, Colombia
- Quibdó, Colombia (from the year 2021)
- Northern Caribbean Autonomous Region, Nicaragua
- Quiché, Guatemala
- Guanajuato, Mexico
- Paraguay (multiple territories - SENASA: its mission is nationwide).
Within the program there is an important element which requires an additional effort: connect, build relationships based on trust and respect with the community. This is a key starting point because it values the importance of ethics throughout each step of the project, expresses collaboration among all the stakeholders and promotes the role of the community itself, leading to sustainability. Excluding this stage can generate resistance from the communities and stakeholders, affecting human relations, project development, project effectiveness, among others.
For this reason, in Lazos de Agua we have been committed from the beginning to co-create solutions with, by and for the community,always having them at the center of all initiatives so that they can reflect on their Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) problems and in turn propose and implement solutions to solve them, which means that they become the protagonists of their own change.
In this process, the Social Art for Behavior Change (SABC) approach is playing a key role,by integrating with the access and capital dimensions, to jointly reduce the barriers that prevent communities from improving their health and life quality.
Leaders of Change are key players in the systemic process. By creating favorable spaces and environments for them to collaborate with other key stakeholders, it is a big step towards sustainability.
CULTURE
Cornerstone in the SABC™ interventions.
This is a crucial dimension of our DNA as a Program. Artists from Quebec, Canada collaborated in a north-south exchange with local artists. In this phase, artistic processes were co-created and workshops or trainings were also given to local artists, who often did not have access to this type of artistic training, due to lack of financial resources, long distances, among others. Likewise, as part of the process, it has always been important to recognize the strength of local art and its artists, so that we can connect with the communities and the different realities. This has led us to strengthen these processes to obtain better results by being accompanied by local partners, who seek to sign contracts with artists or generate other types of business by supporting local art.
The culture is a cornerstone in our partnerships and development of the approach, for this reason, monitoring processes during the design and implementation of SABC™ interventions are conducted under cooperation and close participation processes with those who implement the approach in the projects. The identification of base criteria, the strictness in which we carry out each of the artistic processes, is essential to ensure an active and full participation of the communities, in order for them to be at the center of the whole process. In this way, a safe space is identified to unleash creativity and create as a team, where the cultural characteristics of the communities are understood and the identity of each of the people involved is recognized, for example, some community actors are recognized as Leaders of Change, to create a connection from their skills, achieving mobilization towards transformation and successful interventions.
Lazos de Agua is distinguished by a powerful process of
multi-sectoral collaboration:
The Program is a multi-sector partnership driven by One Drop Foundation, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Femsa Foundation and the Cocacola Foundation, working in close collaboration with Governments, NGO’s, other public and private sector entities, artists and community members.
“We cannot conceive a water system without community participation”.
Sara López, General Director SENASA Paraguay
Implementation and Government Partners
MEXICO
PARAGUAY
COLOMBIA
GUATEMALA
NICARAGUA
Organizations with extensive experience in the ASH sector and extensive experience in working with communities were selected as implementation partners
They play a key role because they are the ones who implement the different strategies in the territories. Strong partners who are well established and understand the regions and their local cultures are sought.
Taking into account the above, in Mexico and Paraguay we worked hand in hand with the governments. Taking into account the above, in Mexico and Paraguay we worked hand in hand with the governments. The proposal was based on adding efforts to the management and methodology of each implementation partner, which is how the A-B-C Model for Sustainability™, joins forces to strengthen its programs and have better results.
Founding Partners
Lazos de Agua was born as an initiative of our founding partners for this Program: Inter-American Development Bank,Mexican FEMSA Foundation,the Coca Cola Foundation of the United States, and the One Drop Foundation One Drop Foundation of Canada, united by the passion and mission of providing water to communities who need it.
We want these services to be sustainable over time so that the investments made for people will allow them to enjoy the most basic element for humanity in the best possible conditions: drinking water and sanitation.
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