text: of houses, and a team of able-bodied men dispatched with bags of cement and a supervisor to build a protectedcatchment at the source. Plastic PVC piping was brought in, courtesy of UNICEF, and a line was laid to a site convenient to all the houses. There, the community built concrete wash-basins and installed taps. "It is like a gift from heaven", says Faustina Candelaria Jimenez, who was born in Rancho Viejo. "Before, we piled up our laundry for two or three days and spent one whole day washing it." Ms. Cruz Lopez Domingo echoed those sentiments, adding that she and other women in the community were finding that the hours saved on the trips back and forth from the well each day left them more time for their children and for weaving. Since 1979, UNICEF has providedtechnical and financial support so that communities of up to 500 people in rural Guatemala could build their own water supply systems. Equipment for gravity-fed systems and more than 1,100 handpumps servicing more than 460,000 people have been supplied to community facilities through the Environmental Sanitation Division of the Ministry of Public Health. With individual communities accepting responsibility for labour and maintenance charges for these systems, rural water supply coverage in Guatemala has increased from 17 to 41 per cent in 10 years, and supervisors like Mr. Hernandez report that the incidence of diarrhoea and infectious diseases is coming down. 25Basic education As one of the four sponsoring United Nations agencies for the World Con- ference on Education for All (Jom- ticn, Thailand, 5-9 March 1990), UNICEF was deeply involved during 1989 in preparatory arrangements for that event. Education in many parts of the world is in crisis following a serious erosion of financial and other com- mitments in the wake of economic recession and structural adjustment
analysis: The text discusses a community project in rural Guatemala, where UNICEF provided support for the construction of a water supply system, which has had a significant impact on the community's daily life, health, and education. The text highlights the success of this project in improving the community's water supply coverage and reducing the incidence of diarrhoea and infectious diseases. The text also mentions UNICEF's involvement in the World Conference on Education for All, which suggests a connection to education.