The project started in 2015 in the small indigenous village Hugua Chini in the middle of the Chaco of Paraguay. After an in-depth evaluation trip in 2016 to Hugua Chini, a pilot project for biosand filters and rainwater harvesting and its evaluation in 2017/2018, we had to diversify the focus of the project due to the difficult contact with the village by strong and prolonged floods in 2019. During this time, together with our local project coordinator Ana Lucia Giménez and her husband Federico Vargas, we were able to establish a collaboration with the University of Asuncion (Universidad Nacional de Asuncion, UNA. Since July 2019, a larger UNA project (aguaXcomrur) has been underway with the goal of improving water supply in rural areas of Paraguay. Among them, a master’s thesis is underway on the biosand filters in Hugua Chini and another indigenous village of Chaco’i.
IngOG+’s contribution in the collaboration with UNA is partly financial and partly in the form of technical support. The cost of travel to the field is shared between UNA and IngOG+. We provided UNA with utensils for microbial water quality analysis. We provide technical support in the form of written and oral feedback on their reports. On the one hand these are student reports, on the other hand the project documentation of aguaXcomrur.
Contact: paraguay@ingog.ch
Involved actors
- Ana Lucia Giménez and Federico Vargas, local project coordination
- Kazike Don Nenito, leader of the community Hugua Chini
- Comisión Comunitaria in Hugua Chini with president Don Zaccharias
- People of Hugua Chini
- Engineers Without Borders Switzerland, IngOG+
- Zenon Gonzales and Ruben Aquino, Spanish-Guaraní translators
- Christine & Javier Sanchez, support with construction materials and helping hands in Concepción