^{8 December 2020}

The first group of communities to be upgraded with water-sensitive infrastructure has finished their participatory workshops designing infrastructure with RISE.

The end-of-year milestone sees RISE Fiji having finished designing infrastructure with the first six communities out of 12 - or tranche 1 communities participating in the RISE trial.

Over the last six months, more than 1,200 men, women, youth and children came together to discuss water, sanitation, and healthy communities. Together with our Fiji team they mapped out the spaces where they feel green infrastructure – like wetlands, septic tanks and pressure pumps – will best suit.

Mere* who participated in the co-design workshops said her investment in improving her community’s access to clean water stretches back to her childhood days spent in the water.

‘Whenever we would go to school, we would go by boat,’ she says. ‘It’s the place where I would catch crabs, fish for maleya and other small fish called keteleka. It was our place of swimming, she says’.

Today, Mere says setting up informal drainage in her community is common, and the safe disposal of waste and wastewater from homes can be challenging.

‘Even for our shower at home, grey water is directly discharged onto the ground. So I’ve arranged stones beside my shower for drainage. I use an old oil drum as a septic tank, and I dug a hole to bury it and direct the pipe into the ground’.

Over one week, she and other residents learned about RISE’s infrastructure that treats household wastewater, improves drainage and stormwater management, improves path access in the community – designing all of this with the community as permanent fixtures of the neighbourhood that everyone can be proud of.

^{RISE CAD Manager Meagan Volau (centre) discusses residents' ideas
on what infrastructure solutions may best suit their community.}

^{The Water Authority of Fiji's involvement in the workshops is an opportunity to explain to residents
their role in monitoring, operation and maintenance of infrastructure.}

Josaia Tabaiwalu Wainiu is a junior co-design facilitator with RISE. He believes that breaking down the function of each piece of infrastructure is critical to enable the community to take ownership.

‘We need to let them know how the systems work, what each piece of infrastructure does, and where it can be located,’ he says.

‘Community co-design workshops are so important because we can design systems that the community accepts and is happy with.  We need to let them have full  ownership so that it can be sustainable in the future’.

^{Josaia Tabaiwalu Wainiu's favourite part of co-design is engaging
with communities and listening to their views.} 

Work will begin in the new year to develop Detailed Engineering Drawings – the technical drawings that represent community aspirations for infrastructure that will serve as the blueprints for construction.

For Alexandria Rounds, who helps draft the technical drawings, understanding the existing systems already in place is critical.

‘The technical surveys are what gives us a better understanding of how we are going to develop the RISE infrastructure using as much knowledge as possible of the systems the community already has in place’, she says.

‘It helps us keep in mind the different challenges that each community has – so we can design infrastructure to address these issues’.

For Mere, the future of her community is bright, and co-design workshops are the start.

‘I think the workshops are a good thing for [my community], but it’s us, the community, that needs to work together to see it through.

‘This project, once implemented, will improve  the wellbeing of the community. We all want good livelihoods’.

^{Brainstorming servicing options that address community issues drives Alexandria.}

Mere* not resident's real name. Name changed for privacy.