February 24, 2018
Unica Foundation has sanctioned a metallic improved cooking stove (MICS) project in Rabaidanda, Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) project in Hamsapur and an irrigation project in Gundi village recently.
Rabaidanda MICS Project
Open fire has caused many health issues, especially for women who mostly spend time in the kitchen in Nepal. In addition, excessive uses of firewood would invite environmental degradation and many natural calamities. So, Unica has been working together with the Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS) Kaski to execute the Improved Cooking Stove (ICS) project in the hilly regions of Kaski district.
Lesser use of firewood and no smoke inside the house are the main characteristics of the ICS we have been introducing. As the firewood is getting expensive, this project is financially effective as well. The villagers get awareness training on how to use the stove and how to clean the smoke-pipe periodically. There is a user’s committee formed locally to coordinate with all household in this matter.
The Rabaidanda community is situated in a slightly below 1.500 meters altitude, which prevented them from getting the subsidy from the government for the metallic stoves. However, Unica Foundation decided to work together with the locals to fulfill their dream to have it. The project has started from 11 December 2017 and will last eight months. The direct beneficiaries of the project is 708 people from 137 household, including 349 women. Unica Foundation has competed a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) project for the same locality earlier.
Hamsapur WaSH Project
Unica Foundation has been working together with the Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS) Kaski in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) sector since a decade. It has completed four projects and another two are ongoing. Hamsapur WaSH project has been started in December 2017 and the duration of the project is one and half year.
Hamsapur is a hilly village in Kaski where the drinking water scarcity has been high. Due to the hilly landscape there was no reliable water source in the uphill, so the viable option was to lift the water from the downhill. From this project, the solar energy based pumps from Grundfos will be installed to bring the water in this community. And, this will go from the pipeline in each household as the gravity flow.
Beside to avail from the clean drinking water, the project will work on spreading awareness on sanitation and hygiene as well as income generating activities. 454 People from 88 household will be directly benefited from this project.
Gundi Irrigation Project
Gundi is a small village in the Mahabharata Range in Chitwan district. This village is about forty kilometers far from the highway (Bhandara). The off-road journey starts from here which goes to the very poor and semi-nomad community called Gundi. Chepangs are predominant in this community. As there is no stable irrigation channel, the villagers are struggling to produce sufficient crops to help their family.
Shanti Griha Nepal (SGN), a Nepalese NGO, has been active in this region since many years and Unica Foundation has started a partnership with them already in 2015. We worked together to build an irrigation cannel for the Dihitar community and handed over to the community already in 2016.
In this project, 37 household (204 people) will be directly benefited by irrigating 10.09 hectares of farmland. The expected outcome is to raise the number of harvest from two to three, which may have a significant impact in the lives of the villagers.
