While technologies and tools are essential, the most important aspect of our work lies in engaging the participation of a community, starting with schools.
Schools are respected, permanent community institutions and have become our partners to building effective community relationships.
We aim is to create a healthy environment within each school by providing safe water, sanitation facilities, and hand washing stations.
Our second aim is to gradually develop the student and school as the role model in sanitation for the community.
Merriam-Webster defines appropriate technology as a “technology that is suitable to the social and economic conditions of the geographic area in which it is to be applied, is environmentally sound, and promotes self-sufficiency on the part of those using it.”
Working in remote areas presents challenges. In the quest to provide appropriate technologies we strive to stay flexible, adaptive, humble and responsive to be effective. This takes a lot of listening to and developing respectful relationships with villagers. They are our teachers and guides, as much as we are theirs..
HTSCongo is well positioned to serve as a bridge between problems and possibilities. We bridge the technology of a developed country with a country that can barely meet even the most basic human needs.
HTSCongo offers its uniquely exceptional on site project management capability. In addition to speaking the language, we are fully versed in local hiring, materials procurement, security, banking, and other construction practices. We bring experience in collaborating successfully with a number of village elders and other community leaders. We have the proven ability to provide the training and technical expertise necessary to design, complete and manage construction of water, sanitation and hygiene facilities.
We believe that rolling up our sleeves and working side-by-side with a community results in sustainable change.
In the life of a project, the community at large is strengthened because local people who are employed during the building of water and sanitation facilities become a team of trained technicians capable of building and caring for these systems.
The community then has the capacity to sustain the resulting water, hygiene and sanitation facilities as the needs grow or change.
Statistics tells us that proper hygiene and hand washing alone can reduce water-related death by 45% but what happens when water is scarce, as is often the case in the Congo.
Because sanitation and hygiene are both dependent on the availability of clean water we:
-Drill water wells: We introduce and train local team in manual well-drilling techniques. In addition to creating a safe water source, drilling provides a team of locals with the means to earn income and provide for their families.
-Improve springs: When appropriate, springs can be a wonderful source of safe water.
-Build rainwater harvesting systems and cisterns: We work in the tropical rain forest of the Congo where rain is an abundant gift to feed hand-washing stations.
From the source to consumption we strive to eliminate all sources of contamination.
The importance of a toilet is enormous, it plays a huge role in preventing the spread of illness and intestinal parasites.
We aim to eradicate open defecation.
For schools and health centers we build latrines.
For the villagers we build latrines slabs or SanPlats.
We approach a community from one of the respected institution in the area. As we help schools or health clinics with their water and sanitation needs, school and clinic officials stand ready as active partners to promote the use of latrines, end open air defecation and build a culture of personal, household, and environmental sanitation in the school or health district.
Strengthening the capacity of the community to manage a self sustained water, hygiene and sanitation program is a prime objective of HTS Congo.
We believe that providing initial training and following up with ongoing support ensures that water sources will be maintained in a sustainable way.
When safe water is readily available and good hygiene practices become the norm, real progress can be made toward ending poverty.
is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity corporation. Your contributions to HTSC are deductible under Section 170 of the code.
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HTSCongo
1757 Log Cabin Road,
Penn Yan, NY 14527,
USA