Indonesian community co-designs water solutions

RISE (Revitalising Informal Settlements and their Environments) is establishing processes that will enable sustainable uptake of water and sanitation interventions in Indonesia and Fiji. Community co-design is at the heart of the RISE project. Recently, they’ve been working with the community of Lempangang, Indonesia.

The community identified that one of the main water-related challenges for Lempangang is flooding causing standing greywater and its associated health implications. It also suffers from poor sanitation and poor drainage.

To tackle this challenge, the RISE ‘Panrita’ (the traditional name for a craftsperson or architect working with a community to design and build holistically with their environment) have gathered men, women and children of Lempangang to co-design a new wastewater system with communal and household elements.

Small groups of participants mapped their wells, toilets, community spaces, and local environment, including where children play. Then, together, they developed the RISE infrastructure plan, which will include constructing new wetland treatment facilities for wastewater that will include mass plantings of tekeré, a native plant in the region.

You can see the co-design process in action in this short video about Lempangang below.

The RISE work is giving hope to the people of Lempangang, with one participant saying: ‘In the near future, maybe not quite yet, our dream will come true—to be happy and not suffer any more because of the water.’

As part of the work in Lempangang, RISE is investigating how the environment gets contaminated and how the community gets sick.

RISE is an action-research program working at the intersections of health, environment, and water and sanitation. Over five years, the program will trial a new water sensitive approach to water and sanitation management in 24 informal settlements. The CRCWSC advises RISE on community engagement and nature-based structural engineering solutions.