Rural Women of Central America take on Water Scarcity

As part of the implementation of the GWP Gender Strategy, a workshop for 24 rural women on the installation and maintenance of a rainwater harvesting system as an alternative to water scarcity recently took place in Honduras. Participants included women who had previous experience in water management and who are leaders in their communities, NGOs, or work in a municipality.

The training had a theoretical part where the participants strengthened their knowledge on integrated water resource management, climate change, watershed management, rainwater harvesting systems, gender and leadership, among other issues.

The women also learned to install a rainwater harvesting systems that uses a geomembrane bag, which is a technology that has been successful in the Dry Corridor of Honduras. They participated in the installation of two systems, including the construction of a hand pump, one of the systems was installed on the university campus and the second was installed in a community garden in a nearby settlement.

One of the objectives of the workshop was to encourage women to replicate this workshop in their communities, to install such a system in their communities and to diversify their household income.

This workshop is an activity in the context of the alliance between GWP Central America, CARE-PROSADE (a project that promotes food security in southern Honduras) and AMANCO-Mexichem (a private global company that manufactures plastic pipes). The workshop was held at the Pan-American Agricultural School (Zamorano), who has since the workshop joined the alliance for further activities.