ROXAS CITY—UNICEF Country representative Tomoo Hozumi expressed appreciation over a joint project with retail giant SM on a water management campaign in Capiz province for children and their families.

“Your company’s funding, matched with the local government and community’s counterpart contributions, allowed us to achieve more than the original targets,” he told SM Supermalls president Annie Garcia in a letter.

“We would like to thank you and your team for your continued trust and look forward to further collaboration and partnership for the benefit of Filipino children.”

The UNICEF-SM “Integrated Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) program for the province of Capiz” was piloted in Capiz municipalities where extreme weather conditions can bring strong rains and floods but even though they are surrounded with floodwaters, households would not have water for drinking and household use. Garcia noted that clean water was fetched from springs and reservoirs which were a long walk away.

It was appropriate that the WASH program got its funding from water itself. UNICEF partnered with SM for the “Drink for 2” drive where for every SM bottled water purchased, one peso went to the Capiz water kitty.

Garcia said the aim was to provide children and their families in 10 villages belonging to the towns of Pontevedra, Maayon, Tapaz, Dao and President Roxas, a water provisioning system that involved potable water and basic sanitation specially latrines and hygiene education.

Before the UNICEF-SM project, children frequently got sick of diarrhea and parasitism.  According to studies, diarrhea ranked 4 as a leading cause of morbidity for children under 5.  A random survey on Nov. 2007 showed that 51.39 percent of grade school pupils have prevalence of parasitism which ranks 7th as leading cause of children under 5 morbidity.

Today, children can drink clean water, take a bath daily with toilets and hand washing facilities. Beyond the water system, the program was able to rehabilitate walkways and paths in the schools for improved safety of 2,298 schoolchildren and 1,334 households.

Of the proposed P2.2 million project in Capiz, SM Prime Holdings Inc. was able to raise P3,454,735.20 from the Drink for 2 campaigns, said Garcia. This was P1,454,735.20 more than the targeted contribution.

With an expense of P2,236,251.98 sourced with local government and community counterparts, at least P1.2 million has been realized for new sites. – Mavic Linan