The axiom we created is:  “Fund raise with clean water programs–save lives with latrines.”   Himalayan Aid was one of the first Asian NGO’s to realize this back in the mid-1990’s, and I’m happy to discuss the logic of this with any and all in as much depth as needed; but I’ll summarize what we’ve learned over the past 20 years this way:  Add clean water systems to a dirty environment and you just spread around the dirty environment; add latrines and you clean up the environment and the dirty water takes care of itself.

We have built latrine systems that service thousands of people in rural Nepal.  None of this works unless we create stakeholders among the local village leaders and latrine recipients.   If they don’t want it and don’t see the point in it, we don’t build it.   When they DO want latrines, some truly great outcomes emerge.  Chiefly,  we have returned years later to the site of a latrine project and have found villagers building and funding their own units.  No foreigners, no bossy NGO’s telling them how to do things.