Team completes yet another back-breaking project Amidst Pandemic

2021-08-23

“Unity is strength, when there is teamwork and collaboration, amazing things can be achieved.”

By: Avant Garde Solutions Team

Projects and challenges are inextricable. With the solid past experiences of surveying amid the pandemic, we thought we were prepared. However, to our surprise, this project turned out to be more arduous than we thought it would be. The project titled; Rural Water supply Functionality and water quality survey was conducted in four municipalities (Parsa, Ramnagar, Kaudena, Chandranagar) of the Sarlahi district for two weeks. Despite the excruciating and highly contagious virus that still actively prevailed in our lives, the team decided to take on this challenge and conduct the survey.       

The main agenda of the survey was to find out the Arsenic and the E-coli in the water. The team was assigned the task to take the survey and analyze the situation. All the safety protocols throughout the project were followed such as masks, face shields, sanitizer to avoid the pernicious situation.

The journey of the team began on August 8 from Kathmandu-Dakshinkali-Hetauda-Sarlahi. There were no major problems whilst on the journey. However, due to landslides, the conditions of the roads were terrible which made the journey longer and tedious. After a 12-hour long ride from Kathmandu, the team reached Sarlahi, and all the necessary setups for training sessions and lab testing were immediately done.

The succeeding day began with an on-hand training session for the enumerators where they were made familiar with their roles and responsibilities. In short, the responsibilities of the enumerators were to collect data using the mobile app, collecting 10 samples of water in a container provided to them.

For the first few days of the project, the survey went well and the enumerators seemed confident. The operations were going on smoothly but problems started to arise one after another which hindered the speed of the project. Firstly, one of the members of the team got sick and was urgently sent off home, which dropped our speed. In addition to that, the complexities of meeting the project sample size increased with time. Furthermore, the bad weather was a strong external factor that hampered the health of all the team members.

Heavy rainfalls and floods continued for few days which triggered our plan. When the project resumed after the situation got under control, there was an influx of data and water samples received in a day. As a result, the team had to spend many long nights getting back on track. Despite a lot of external factors which hampered the progress of the project, the hardworking team was able to complete the project before the deadline.

With unexpected changes in the weather, natural disaster, deteriorating health of the team members the completion of the project on time seemed nearly impossible. However, the right mix of planning, controlling, mooring, and team effort made a huge difference to complete the project on time. The team would like to extend their gratitude towards all the dedicated enumerators, supportive respondents, and lab technicians who did not give up despite the inevitable circumstances and worked without hesitation. Like said, "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships."

 

Some Glimpse of the Two-Week Long Survey