Water for All Projects cooperate by Atlas Copco Thailand and Taiwan

Water for All Chiang Mai province’s project in Thailand. In 2017, Atlas Copco Thailand and Atlas Copco Taiwan has been combined water for all project together under the concept “water of life”. Atlas Copco Thailand conducted a field visit in Sep. 2016. This is big opportunity that we can support two communities in Chiang Mai province by the cooperation of 2 Atlas Copco companies. Thailand’s project that we has been cooperate with plan international is Ban Nong Wua Dang Community.

Ban Nong Wua Dang, a sub-village of Nong Khiew, is located in the mountainous area of Chiang Dao district, Chiang Mai province. The village comprised of different ethnic groups who are Lua, Muser, Ekaw, Ka Chin, etc. Every year, the village does not have enough water for drinking or consuming for 3-4 months. The village people needs to buy drinking water, and water for consumption. The only available water source has a poor quality and is usually contaminated with dirt and by the use of animals. The lack of clean water affected directly to the children health from poor families who cannot afford to buy clean water.

There were some changes in project activities at Ban Nong Wua Dang. Based on the original proposal, the project would support to install water filter at Ban Nong Wua Dang. But it found out later that it was not appropriate. This is because the exiting water storage which was planned to install water filter would not have enough level of water as it relies only on rainfall. The volume of annual rainfall is not enough to meet the minimum requirement by the water filter system. Therefore, the activity was changed to distributing water supplies to the community people in order that they can connect water from the big water reservoir at the Royal project to their households. The size of the reservoir is 81 meters x 81 meters x 25,000 meters, constructed by the Department of Irrigation. The capacity of the reservoir is 25,000 cubic meters.

The request for change at Ban Nong Wua Dang came from the community’s needs and their involvement. Therefore, the project revised the original project activities from installation of water filter to installation of water pipe supplies system as mentioned above. This created the community empowerment and allow them to start to do the community water management by themselves and allow them to learn on water management by community and for community. Atlas Copco Thailand expected that the community will be the role model in term of the ability to collect more funds in order to organize additional activities related to WASH by themselves in the future.

Taiwan’s project is Ban Wiang Haeng School, Atlas Copco Thailand conducted a field visit to Ban Wiang Haeng School to assess and confirm the school’s need on water filtration system. With the support from Atlas Copco Taiwan, this project improve access to child friendly water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities and raise awareness of knowledge and skills in proper hygiene behaviour amongst children and parents at the Ban Wiang Haeng School, Chiang Mai.