Sepe Tiaraju is a tiny area in Brazil that lacks electricity, clean water, and basic water infrastructure. It has an area of 797 km2 and is occupied by a community of 79 families, split into 4 neighbourhoods. Over the past years, little or no government aid and support has reached the area which has been depending mainly on external NGOs for help.

Currently, the community receives its water from mines and wells while waste water is disposed into shallow “black holes” that are close to the surface and cause contamination. Due to the poor infrastructure, both drinking and cleaning water arriving to the community occasionally get mixed with debris and sand  increasing the chances of diseases.

The Village

Framework

Our Partner

Our Goals and the Future

Terra A Terra Arquitetura is a charity that was established by the Brazilian’s professional architects. Its mission is to help ensure that the architectural and engineering profession is at the forefront of efforts to reduce poverty in the South of Brazil. It does this through increasing the poverty-reducing impact of architectural design and engineering.

Seeing as EWB-UCL and TaT have previously collaborated on the Aquaculture system in Jardim De Gonzaga, Sao Carlos, TaT will remain the principal correspondence between the communities and EWB-UCL, before, during and after the design/ construction phases of the project. They will also have full responsibility in ensuring correct and appropriate maintenance of both projects.

 

As of today, TaT has established links with the local community and has ensured us that the community is welcoming of the help being provided by EWB-UCL.

During the design process, TaT will convey ideas proposed by the team to the community, ensuring their acceptance and will be the voice of the community to the team so that the team builds an adequate system that fulfills the needs of the community. Once designs have been finalised, TaT will manage the sourcing and procurement of materials. TaT will also contribute to finding accommodation for the team members.

By the end of this project, we will hope to have constructed water tanks and filtration units to cover as much of the community as possible. Because of the restricted time we have in Brazil, however, it will not be possible to create a system that will satisfy the whole community. It should be noted, however, that
one of our goals is to ensure the community learns how to build and continue building the system which will push them into finishing it themselves following our departure.

​

In the future, following this project, we hope to return to Sepe Tiaraju with more teams to build a perfect water infrastructure system which enable water to reach all 79 homes in the area without any environmental impact and with maximum sustainability.