That´s the spirit of the people in the Filipines, the origin of the mother of founder Alfred Lee Hofer. In 2012 we came up with the idea of SAMA-SAMA and raised some funds in order to
install a ferro-cement water-tank (better known as ’Banga’ or ’Banga Pinoy’) in the village
of Ligad, Palawan, Philippines. The tank collects water from a nearby spring and was built
together with voluntaries from th
e local population, who were guided by two experts from
the Manila-based NGO, PCWS-ITNF (Philippine Center for Water and Sanitation – International
Training Network Foundation). The tank holds up to 3000 Liters of water, which is
being distributed to the nearby households in order to improve sanitation and health issues. Now the inhabitants of Ligad continuously have fresh water at their disposal, which is
a great advantage in times of draughts and extensive heat-periods. With the help of our engineers, who taught the participants on how to build, use, maintain
and repair a ’Banga’, the villagers were able to build six further tanks in the region within
the last year, of which some are used for irrigation purposes. Free knowledge, high life-expectancy-rates and sustainability. Perspectives that we from
SAMA-SAMA and our partner PCWS-ITNF shared in our pilotproject. Now, in order to continue our mission we have set our goal to continuously provide a
good water supply by starting at the northern tip of Palawan going south. Our long-term
aim is to research, collect and provide knowledge on more basic technologies so that
we can create an online data-base and a real live showroom. Like this anyone can get hands-on information
about water-supply, hygiene, dwelling, education, nourishment, medical treatment and more. A key issue to our projects is that participats who want to learn, shall get the opportunity to do so. Lectures and discourses about about how to build, use, maintain and repair these basic technologies are the maintopics of the dialogue. Also, with this method we can find out more easily what up-coming basic technologies would be of most benefi ciary to the local populations in order to ensure a more autonomic existance.
