research/PROJECTS

Water is Life: The Trinidad and Tobago Initiative

The Trinidad and Tobago Vision 2020 National Strategic Plan acknowledges that the country requires affordable and reliable water supplies. Threatened by episodic rainfall followed by longer periods of drought, the climatic changes predicted by the Caribbean Meteorological Organisation (CMO) underscores the urgency of the islands within the Caribbean region to explore alternate methodologies for delivering water to all their citizens.

Implicit to these challenges is the need for behavioral change among all citizens across all sectors and socio-economic groups within the country. The Institute for Public Health and Water Research is responding to this need by launching Water is Life: The Trinidad and Tobago Initiative, a comprehensive, long-range infrastructure and educational intervention funded by the Royal Bank of Canada Blue Water Project. Initiative partners include the Texas A&M Health Science Center, The University of East Anglia, The University of the West Indies, and the Global Water Partnership.

The initiative is intended to deliver education regarding safe water acquisitioning, storage, management and utility practices to promote sanitation and hygiene literacy and improve water and health outcomes. The project will focus on improving health outcomes among school children in nine communities across both Trinidad and Tobago.

Funded through a three-year renewable grant for USD $300,000, the partner organizations will seek to build capacity for water stewardship through significant interaction with the local communities to help in the design and construction of the infrastructure and, even more importantly, in the management, protection, and appropriate use of the systems.

Some of the educational outreach will be directed at the entire community and some at key "champions" who will take the lead on subsequent local management of the systems. Through the champions, interventions are expected to target capacity development and contribute to policy dialogue addressing water quality and health in rain water harvesting technologies.

Results from this initiative is expected to help establish safe water management practices at the community and household level and facilitate the delivery of safe drinking water systems to selected rural communities of Trinidad and Tobago where they depend heavily on rainwater and truck-borne water supplies.

This project will also evaluate the impact of its efforts within one year after implementation to determine the sustainability of the interventions and the likelihood of effecting water and health outcomes through behavioral interventions. Findings are expected to contribute to the emerging dialogue underpinning the call for integrating behavioral interventions with technological solutions aimed at water supply challenges.