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Lack of clean water, malaria and malnutrition

Fair Future and our friends face Asia’s highest child malnutrition rate here. East Sumba is indeed one of the world’s regions with the highest rate of malnourished children. Infant mortality due to lack of clean water and toilets is staggering. How to care for the sick when there is no drinking water available? How to eat and drink healthily?

Fighting the malaria epidemic in East Sumba

General medicines available are scarce, and those to treat malaria and its associated epidemic are non-existent. Our medical teams – but also the local medical centres – are short of medicines. From then on, caring for many patients who come to see us becomes extremely difficult, and offering appropriate treatment becomes complicated.

A health emergency for a waterless village

Laindatang is a village without water. Everyone is sick and doesn’t have enough to eat and drink. Children are underweight. We must act for these hundreds of people and give them access to clean water and toilets. Malaria, dengue fever and infectious diarrhoea linked to contaminated water problems are taking their toll. After completing the feasibility studies, we are ready to implement this project this month.

Women teachers saving lives in rural areas?

This primary medical care program in ultra-rural areas, which we initiated and started last year, is extraordinary; it saves lives. Since December 2022, participants in the primary medical care program – the village teachers – have provided first aid to children and villagers. They treat wounds, diseases, malaria, and dengue and do more than just save lives.

In a few figures

They are the Future

What does a kitchen look like without food or water

What does a kitchen look like without food or water

This new "Picture of the Day" shows you what the kitchen of an East Sumba family is like. A kitchen like there are tens of thousands here. One of the elements we always see is the presence of five-litre jerry cans. They are the ones that serve as a container for the water that the girls and women have to fetch from afar. We also notice the absence of food, including no rice, only corn. Rice is expensive, and nobody can buy it here in Laindatang, East Sumba: No electricity, running water, and sink.

Just a hearth that will be used once a day only to prepare corn porridge mixed with vegetables and roots that the women have been looking for in the forest. Salt and red peppers. That will be all for the day and the whole family, including dogs and cats.

Families here live without clean or potable water, yet access to potable water is crucial for survival and maintaining good health. Without clean water, families in the areas where Fair Future and Kawan Baik work are forced to drink contaminated water, which leads to waterborne diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever and dysentery.

This has an immense impact on daily life and livelihoods. Women and children must walk long distances to fetch water, which takes up much time and interferes with other activities such as work or education.

What do the sanitary facilities we build look like?

What do the sanitary facilities we build look like?

This new "Picture of the Day" shows you an example of construction that we carry out in the poorest villages of Indonesia and Asia. Here the families before did not have access to clean water and toilets. Fair Future and Kawan Baik Foundations have been changing this for years, and noticeable changes are being seen.

Access to drinking water and toilets is a fundamental human right. Still, unfortunately, in the regions where we are, nearly 90% of families in ultra-rural areas do not have access to these necessities. Here are some steps that can be taken to provide access to clean water and toilets in the regions that do not have access:

The first step is to identify the areas most needing these facilities. Fair Future and Kawan Baik proceed through research, surveys, and working with our local partners and authorities. Once regions that do not have access to clean water and toilets have been identified, we develop plans to provide these services. This takes into account the specific needs of each community. To do this, we have several ways to provide access to clean water, such as drilling deep wells, installing water filtration systems and collecting rainwater. The method used will depend on the specific needs of the community.

Access to toilets is also essential to reduce the rate of infectious diseases such as Cholera, Dengue, hepatitis A, and Malaria. In this photo, two sanitary facilities have been built using the Ferro-Cement method, with a tank for collecting dirty water and clean water for watering.

Fair Future also considers it essential to educate the community on the importance of hygiene and sanitation practices to prevent the spread of disease. We do this through the #waterconnections and #kawansehat and #primarymedicalcare programs.

One of our missions is also to monitor and maintain these new facilities. This requires the training of local community members who will carry out essential maintenance and repairs.

Inventing toys when you don’t have any

Inventing toys when you don’t have any

This "Picture of the Day"  shows two children from Tanah Mbanas, Sumba Tengah, who have created a kitchen with waste from the plastic they found around their houses made of earth and bamboo. They are playing cooking. Here, families do not have access to water and even less to clean water.

Here in Sumba, in these ultra-rural villages, it is not uncommon for children of all ages to invent toys and games from natural materials or objects from waste or old. In these areas, children rely on their creativity and ingenuity to find new forms of play and have fun.

For example, children can make their toys from natural materials such as sticks, pebbles and leaves. They can use these materials to create games like building forts or playing "tag" with modified rules. Likewise, old items like cans, tires, or ropes can be repurposed to create new toys, like a toy truck, makeshift soccer ball, or swing.

These types of imaginative play experiences are very beneficial for the development of children. They encourage creativity, problem-solving and social interaction as children work together to develop new ideas and adapt the rules of their games. Additionally, playing in nature can provide opportunities for physical activity and exploration, positively affecting physical and mental health.

Primary medical care dedicated to children

Primary medical care dedicated to children

This "Picture of the Day"  shows children who, thanks to the "Primary Medical Care" programme, learn to protect themselves against illness and injury through simple gestures and habits. Children in these regions do not have access to health centres, and no doctors are present in these villages (apart from those from the Fair Future and/or Kawan baik Indonesia foundations). It makes prevention an essential component of their health and well-being. Children in ultra-rural areas can significantly reduce their risk of illness or injury by incorporating simple habits and actions into their daily routines. In addition, it is essential to make children and parents aware of the importance of these habits and gestures so that they become part of their daily lives.

Giving primary medical care is not insignificant. It usually is doctors and nurses who do this. This is what makes this program unique in terms of innovation. Those who provide care, life-saving drugs and cures for Malaria, for example, are the teachers of this isolated village in eastern Indonesia. Therefore, for us here on site, it is essential to assess the impact and effectiveness of this program regularly. We carry out surveys, and we meet to collect medical data. We, therefore, highlight the areas where we can make the necessary changes. If this primary medical care program is a huge success, it is because it involves the communities in the various planning and implementation processes.

Teachers and parents of ill or injured children provide us with essential information. This 100% medical emergency program is in the process of success. It requires multiple collaborations, adequate ongoing training, sharing of supported cases and regular evaluation to ensure its safety, effectiveness and sustainability.

Malnutrition is taking its toll here where we are

Malnutrition is taking its toll here where we are

This "Picture of the Day" shows children in East Sumba, where we are at work, as I post this Photo of the Day. Fair Future and Kawan Baik teams, as part of the #kawansehat #primarymedicalcare and #waterconnections projects, cook for children in the most rural and poor areas. In this image, some are drinking strawberry milk for the first time. They had never seen a straw before, and I remember all the kids asking us how to drink that kind of drink. We had to show them and help them plant the straw in the milk carton.

Malnutrition is an endemic problem here in all the rural villages of East Sumba. It is also the region with the highest rate of malnourished children in Indonesia. Here, clean water is absent from the houses, and the consumption of unclean water generates health problems and serious illnesses. And to cook, drink, and wash, you need water. And in order not to get sick, you also need water. Food production cannot occur without water, and families do not have enough income to buy food, rice and vegetables. On average, they live with less than two litres of water per person per day for everything: cooking, eating, drinking, drinking, bathing, going to the toilet and doing laundry. Have you ever tried?

Most children here are underweight and malnourished because they cannot eat enough. Meal frequency is one meal per day. Young children may be able to eat twice if all goes well. The menu will consist of rice and corn because more than rice alone is needed. In East Sumba, a kilo of rice costs three times more than in Java or Bali. Only a little salt and peppers accompany the meal to give flavour and taste.

Water Connections project in Laindatang

Water Connections project in Laindatang

The Water Connections project, Laindatang Site, is our current top priority. Laindatang is a village without water. Everyone is sick and does not have enough to eat and drink. Children are underweight, and so are adults. We must act for these hundreds of people and give them access to clean water. Here, malaria, dengue fever and infectious diarrhoea linked to contaminated water problems are taking their toll. After completing the feasibility studies, we are ready to implement this project this month. Indeed, we are there now and wish to start this necessary project for the hundreds of people suffering from the lack of water in the region.

A simple jerrycans story in East Sumba

A simple jerrycans story in East Sumba

Two litres of water per day and per person to live. And this, thanks to an object as innocuous as an old five-litre can. A stupid plastic container? For most of us, it is an object that will go irretrievably in the trash. But here, for the families that Fair Future and Kawan Baik work with – tens of thousands of families – it is essential to the survival of an entire family because it is thanks to him that these two litres of water will come home. So, let’s talk a bit about plastic canisters, if you don’t mind, to understand why it’s so important.

Learning how to live healthier in rural areas

Learning how to live healthier in rural areas

Thanks to the Fair Future & Kawan Baik teams on site and the various publications that our two foundations have produced for them, we share a few hours in each group of houses, in each village where Fair Future and Kawan Baik have carried out one or more projects related to access to drinking water and to toilets and other sanitary facilities. Together, we learn the means available to the villagers to have a healthier life, with fewer illnesses, to eat and drink better, to wash more, to take care of themselves and one’s families.

Picture of the day

#pictureoftheday | More often than not, a single picture is worth all the words in the world.

Sometimes we show you real heroes, but it will always be an authentic story that one of us is living and wants to pass on!

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