Most individuals do not think about water too much because they can just open a tap and it is there; go to t a toilet and flush the waste away; and take a nice hot shower or bath after a hard day’s work, but not everyone is a fortunate.
How Access to Water is Providing Dignity
When Gift Dick-Tom and her family of seven were moved from a single room residence into a one-bedroom apartment in the Passive House Prototypes (PHPs) community in a little “eco-village,” where there was space for the children to play, the first thing she said to Megan Chapman was “Now I have my own toilet!”
I think there is nothing more degrading, especially to a woman or a teenage girl, than not having their own toilet and having to share with a large community, if there is a toilet at all. Personal hygiene and access to hygienic sanitation conditions is a huge concern, especially in developing countries where there are housing and water shortages.
In many of these countries the governments are struggling with massive housing shortages and their inability to keep up with providing adequate housing and sanitary toilet conditions. In many areas, either inner-city slums or urban areas, it is the women and girls who have to walk to fetch and carry the water for the whole family’s needs, and defecation is often done in the open.
Globally, there are around 330 million urban households either living in substandard housing or who are financially stretched by mounting housing costs, as per the McKinsey 2014 Global Report on Housing. If something radical is not done to check this, the numbers could rise to around 440 million by 2025.
These Passive House Prototypes in Nigeria are a “Whole-System Design” and consist of a cluster of green apartments arranged around courtyards, bio-climatically designed to be self-cooling and solar powered. Water is sourced from beneath the feet of the occupants, and other green principles such as compressed earth block walls and light coloured roofs keep the interiors cool.
These green villages are a fantastic innovation and it is hoped that more countries, especially those in Africa, will take note of this manner of providing low-end housing that is good for both the occupants and the environment.
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