Sustainability & Community Contributions
SSAAP, founded on the Peace Corps principle of sustainability, arises from Heather Cumming’s experiences being a Peace Corps-Zambia volunteer (2004-2006).
There will always be a need for clean water in countless villages in remote areas of Africa. Funds and interest permitting, the project has the potential to sustain itself indefinitely.
Heather Cumming searches for sustainable ways to make the projects breathe on their own.
How does she achieve this? By asking the villages to give 1/4 of the cost of a project through their commitment: whether in currency, food, or labor. As well, villagers are encouraged to form committees to oversee the projects started by SSAAP.
SSAAP’s business goal for Community Contribution is that the community must contribute to SSAAP to keep it alive and sustained, not just that the village contributes toward its own projects designed by SSAAP. The Community Contribution is a key factor in the give and take symbiosis in both of the nations it serves. However, the Community Contribution piece of the project also looks different in both nations.
In rural Simwatachela, Zambia, where SSAAP has its own office and headquarters, the Community Contribution ends up being maintenance and upkeep of our office and home (headquarters). The roof needs thatched once every 3-4 years, and the community steps in and steps up to the task! Whether it be providing the labor to re-cement the floor (SSAAP covers the cement costs), or re-roofing the house, the community’s responsibility is to help SSAAP/Heather with everything that she alone cannot do. The people gladly come to help, on the one condition that she cooks them lunch as food is the currency in Africa. So the housing aspect of SSAAP becomes minimal so that more project funds can go toward the projects themselves rather than toward housing in the African nations SSAAP serves.
In Sierra Leone, our partner CBO (Community-Based Organization) called Grace Children’s Foundation (GCF) supports SSAAP initiatives by allowing us to stay in their office and providing a room for us there. But the villagers are building us a SSAAP headquarters. In turn, SSAAP digs wells, sponsors animal projects, small-scale rice and cashew farming and children to attend school. SSAAP also funds sanitation and hygiene initiatives including digging latrines for toilets on their behalf. SSAAP provides the funding for all of GCF’s projects.