Future Projects

The Impact of the Chlorine Bank Network: To enable the chlorinators to be completely permanent and community sustained by creating a Haitian owned and operated chlorine tablet distribution system.

 

Our vision is that the chlorinators will become completely sustained by Haitian communities and the Haitian Government. We seek to encourage local "ownership" of each water system and teach local people the skills needed to maintain the chlorine system for years. 

 

For the chlorinators to become completely community and government sustained, they only need one improvement: a local supply of chlorine tablets.  Currently, there are no distribution centers for chlorine tablets besides International Action.  There are chlorine tablets available at an import-export company, but they are sold individually at a very expensive rate. 

 

Haitian community leaders and DINEPA agree that a locally run chlorine distribution system is vital to the permanence of the chlorinators. They are ready to distribute chlorine without relying on an outside group. We call this distribution system the Chlorine Bank Network.

 

This network is critical to the success of Haiti’s water systems, and will be one of our main focuses over the next five years.  

 

The Chlorine Bank Network works as follows: There is a central chlorine bank – located in Port-au-Prince – and branch banks throughout Haiti. The central bank imports chlorine tablets in bulk to contain costs. The central bank then distributes the chlorine tablets to various branch banks. Finally, community leaders purchase chlorine tablets – from the closest chlorine bank – for their neighborhood chlorinator. International Action will be supporting the Chlorine Bank Network until it can sustain itself.

 

Once the Chlorine Bank Network has been established, International Action will turn over operations to bank staff/communities and a Chlorine Bank Network Board will be formed.  Each community that buys chlorine tablets from the Chlorine Bank Network will have a representative on the board. Collectively, they will determine the selling price of chlorine for all of the chlorine banks. 

 

The funds for community leaders to purchase chlorine will come from their local water stations. People are charged 1 to 10 US¢ by water stations for every bucket they fill. Some of this money is used by the community leaders to buy more water and the rest is spent on chlorine.