Meet China’s Water Gladiators

We’ve always made it a point to listen to the local community. We pay attention to their personal stories of hardship, like their experiences of going on long backbreaking treks to collect a single bucket of water from the nearest water source. We then include the local community’s voices to inform our decisions from the design to the completion of an initiative, to ensure that their water and sanitation concerns are addressed in the most effective and sustainable manner.

This November, friends of Lien AID were given the opportunity to meet and listen to four Student Village Officers (SVOs) who had traveled from their rural provinces of Chongqing, Gansu and Guizhou to Singapore to better understand water policies, governance and management to apply in their projects to achieve sustainable impact. SVOs are young graduates deployed by the Chinese government for a period of up to 3 years in rural villages in order to improve administration in these communities. We empower and groom selected SVOs to effective implement water projects at their respective villages. These SVOs champion these projects, and working together with the local communities, ensure the sustainability of the infrastructure.