We will construct seven ferrocement tanks in Laindatang to provide clean water to isolated families. Three of these are funded, but four are still needed. We require CHF 2,300.- for each tank. Your support guarantees access to clean water for the most remote communities. Donate now and be part of this life-changing project.
All Articles & News: Fair Future’s Impact in Rural Areas
The news and articles page that reveals the essence of our organization. Each article highlights the experiences, values, and efforts of the Fair Future team. Our writing goes beyond reporting; it tells the essence of the communities we connect with and the challenges and triumphs we experience.
Welcome to the Fair Future News page! Our teams on the ground have carefully crafted each article, story, and update.
These pages contain a wealth of unique content that truly represents our mission, our work, and our interactions with the communities we serve.
These articles will give you a deeper look into our work, highlighting our sources of inspiration and sharing real-life experiences as they unfold.
Our stories convey our deep emotions about the people we impact, the obstacles we overcome, and the victories we achieve. Direct from action on the ground, we share authentic stories of providing medical aid, educational opportunities, and clean water to those who need it most, bringing hope into their lives. We offer honest reflections that tell real stories, reflecting the heartfelt spirit at the heart of our mission – all crafted without any AI help, but rather by individuals living this experience every day.
We invite you to engage with us and be inspired by the powerful stories of ourselves and the communities we have been privileged to serve. Enjoy reading!
Alex Wettstein – Fair Future Foundation – Updated in February 2025
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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.
We have a toilet for the first time in our life!
This "Picture of the Day" shows you an adorable couple from East Sumba, the village of #mbinudita -who are not used to being photographed-. Beneficiaries of the #waterconnections program who have had access to toilets at home for a few hours. But not only toilets: They can shower there, wash their clothes, and create a vegetable garden. And most importantly, eat and drink healthily. No more getting sick from the water. No more spending hours on the paths to fetch a few litres of dirty water.
East Sumba is one of the regions in the world with the highest rate of malnourished children. Infant mortality due to lack of clean water and toilets is staggering. Our medical teams still spend much of their time giving medical treatment and medicine to people and children who don't have clean water to swallow. Or how to treat a child who suffers from diarrhoea by giving him tablets that he will have to drink with inedible water, the source of his illness? Say to cook the water? It has no wood; frankly, when you're thirsty, you drink what's there.
But here, things have changed dramatically. Over thirty healthy sanitation facilities and over forty clean water tanks have been built for these almost 280 #rebuildmbinudita families. Every week we see new vegetable gardens created, many more children going to school, including young girls, and more mothers looking after their families instead of walking for hours to fetch five litres of dirty water.
When only dirty water remains to try to survive
This "Picture of the Day" shows some children looking slightly disappointed at the edge of the well, which contains no water. There are only 30 to 50 centimetres of water left. This water is black and dirty, and it will surely make them sick. But they will bring some back because, as the villagers often tell me: "When you're thirsty, you don't have time to boil water or find clean water. You're thirsty, so you drink this that there is …".
Having clean water heals people, improves families' health and reduces disease. Water is the best medicine in the world.
Here in Laindatang, the community, its inhabitants, and the families have always maximized the use of rainwater for cooking, eating, and drinking. Washing or doing laundry is done simultaneously: People wash their bodies with detergents directly at the water source. Linked to the lack of water, the villagers wash only once a month – with the related health consequences – or at best, every two weeks.
It should be noted that these families have never had sanitary facilities. Peeing and pooping are done behind a tree with all the health issues. For menstruating women, the lack of water makes this time very complicated.
A sanitary emergency: We invite you to support the urgent program in the village of Laindatang, East Sumba, which consists of giving water as quickly as possible via a deep borehole, two healthy sanitary installations and two/three water tanks 6,750-litres of water to these several hundred people. Click on the button bellow.
Kids here have to fetch water from the age of five!
This "Picture of the Day" shows you a five-year-old girl who, twice a day, descends the hill, steep and stony, without shoes to fetch water. She runs to go to the source, 500m away. Sometimes she falls, hurts herself, and comes back up with difficulty carrying a 5-litre jerrycan of not-so-clean water, which she and her friends have been looking for at the source.
In this village, like in many others here, people can only wash once a month, are all sick and don't have enough to eat and drink. Without access to this clean water, families – especially children – suffer from severe malnutrition, chronic respiratory and joint diseases and other illnesses linked to the consumption of dirty water and the absence of sanitation facilities. The fight against malaria, dengue fever and infectious diarrhoea also requires access to clean water and healthy water tanks. And to water that does not stagnate but circulates between the installations.
As we have already said, East Sumba is the poorest province in Southeast Asia, the region with the highest child malnutrition and associated mortality. Fait Future, therefore, wishes to act for these hundreds of people and give them access to clean and healthy water for their health.
East Sumba, a village without clean water!
This "Picture of the Day" shows you a thrilled woman because when we last visited the "Water Connections – Laindatang" Project site, we brought – thanks to the Truck of Life – several jerry cans filled with drinking water, or about one hundred litres. So everyone is scrambling to get a little. We shared this water with the villagers.
The Water Connections project, Laindatang Site, is one for which we also seek help. Laindatang is a village without drinking water. People only wash once a month, are sick and don't have enough to eat and drink. All children are underweight, and so are adults. We must act for these hundreds of people and give them access to drinking water. The project consists of drilling a deep borehole, building healthy sanitary facilities and two clean water storage tanks, of the ferro-cement type, with a capacity of 6,500 litres each.
Here Malaria, Dengue fever and infectious diarrhoea linked to the problems of contaminated water are wreaking havoc. After carrying out the feasibility studies, we are now ready to implement this project this month. Indeed, we are on the site now and would like to start this necessary project for the hundreds of people suffering from a lack of water in the region.
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.
Learn how to provide Primary Medical Care
This "Picture of the Day" shows you one of the classes of brave women (and two or three men) who learn with our teams how to give first aid – Primary Medical Care which is the most important – to a person or a sick or injured child.
These first days of medical training welcomed around sixty participants from the most isolated and rural villages. To give you an idea, folks, none of these villages has access to clean or safe water, and only a few have access to some electricity. There is often no road leading there, but only paths that are often impassable. And, of course, no medical centre or health centre near the villages.
The participants are 95% women, and all are teachers in the school of their ultra-rural region. What they have been doing for a few months now is remarkable. They heal and undoubtedly save lives, see here some images taken with their mobile phone.
Aside from being most undoubtedly unique in the world, the magic of this "primary medical care" program is that it works. The first batch of about 60 teachers who have undergone training in rural primary medical care are now gaining more and more confidence, and hundreds of urgent medical care are being provided to the children of sick or injured adults. Lives are being saved.
In a few days, Fair Future Foundation with Kawan Baik Indonesia will evaluate this program directly from the villages, in the company of those who are its heroes, all these extraordinary women.
The Water Connections Program, in a single image
This "Picture of the Day" shows you what the #watwerconnections program could look like from a technical side. Be a real "puzzle" that takes into account variables such as height differences, capacities, volumes, heights, distances, pressures and flow rates, diameters, inches, depths, quality, PH, watts, volts, solar and the panels that go with it, the notions of AC and DC, day and night working hours, eating yes but when? Sleep, yes but when? The number of families and children who will be there to help us today?
But Fair Future and Kawan Baik, together with the villagers of this region of East Sumba, NTT, in just under 18 months, we have provided access to drinking water and toilets to more than 250 families, i.e. nearly 2,800 people, more than 65% of whom are children under the age of 12. Clean water is the best medicine and also the cheapest.
And as I write these few lines, we are drilling, treating, operating, prescribing and training. And you can always support Fair Future's technical and medical teams by donating. Your gesture will go a long way in helping us continue to help them have better health and a healthier life.
We invite you to look at the Water Connections project map here, Kawan.
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.
Jerry cans here in East Sumba, are worth gold
This "Picture of the Day" shows you a young girl between ten and twelve, returning from the only water point in the village. She had to walk a few kilometres to fetch these five (5) litres of water, which is unhealthy since everyone does the laundry at this water source. This small amount of water will be used by his family, who, on average, can only use 2 to 3 litres per day per person. Location: Mata Air Payianu, Prai Paha, Nggaha Oriangu, Sumba Timur, NTT.
The jerry cans? They are essential because it is the only, or cheapest, way to fetch water from wells and distant water sources. They're also handy as they have a cap, but all here also use plastic to make a rudimentary 'seal' to make the container even more airtight, so you don't lose any water along the way. These cans are old 5-litre cooking oil cans. Once empty, people have to buy them expensively for their water needs. Some are years old and have travelled thousands of miles on the heads of these East Sumba children.
Here at Rumah Kambera, Fair Future and Kawan Baik staff have recovered quite a few ancient ones. We exchanged them for new ones, which we brought filled with water, clean and healthy with the Truck of Life.
In a few days, we will be there and collect more old jerrycans. They are true testimonies, like certain people's faces: Marked by hours of walking and exhausting work, fatigue exhaustion; these are often beautiful faces that we don't forget.
My family is going to have toilets at home
This "Picture of the Day shows you a family looking at the Fair Future and Kawan Baik teams who are finishing the construction of the first toilets in the history of this family, of this small group of houses. It's an incredible event for all of them who, until now, went out into nature to pee and poo. Location: Prai Paha, Nggaha Oriangu, Sumba Timur, NTT.
These toilets are part of more than forty toilets – healthy sanitary facilities – built by the Foundation as part of the #waterconnections project in East-Sumba. We also had to drill three deep wells and build more than thirty water reservoirs with a capacity varying between 3,500 and 24,000 litres, all connected by tens of thousands of meters of HDPE pipes.
Learn to live better? There is no age for that!
This "Picture of the Day": To live old, live happily, as the saying goes. This man is not old, but the harshness of life here, the hours spent on gravel and dirt roads fetching unhealthy water and consuming it, give him the traits of an old man from the village. Location: Padi, village of Mbinudita, East Nusa Tenggara.
An old bamboo cane that he made himself, just a pareo to wear, his skin tanned by the sun and the work in the fields, the rice paddies. His thinness is linked to eating his fill here being impossible. Him? He's not that old, but he doesn't know his age. He tells us: 60 years. And he is there, we have known him for a long time. He attends the meeting with the families of Padi, Mbinudita, and East-Sumba.
He listens to us talk about the means that can be put in place so that he too can have a better life, a life with less water stress, less disease, and more to drink and eat, thanks to the means and infrastructures that Fair Future and Kawan Baik have built the last four years here.
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.
Some of the children of SD Mbinudita, East Sumba sing
This "Picture of the Day": Yesterday, we asked the children to sing a song outside, in front of their school in SD Negeri Mbinudita. A song that we recorded and which will serve as a support for the film "Matawai", which Fair Future produced. A film about the immense problems linked to the lack of clean water here in this region… Location: SD Negeri Mbinudita, East Nusa Tenggara.
In 2019, there were only about sixty, in 2023 there are more than a hundred and this is increasing. From three classes, we went to five and it will grow even more during the year. More children mean more classes, more teachers and more life too.
Yesterday, Kawan Elthon, Primus and Ino recorded the children singing a song called: "Akulah Sang Air", which means: "I am water". So yesterday was a great day for all these little ones, to whom we explained what we were doing. Soon you will be able to hear them as part of the film "Matawai" (water sources) which will be presented in the next two weeks.
"Akulah Sang Air – I am water"… Nothing could be more true here for all these children whose primary mission -in their everyday life- is to often cover several kilometres on foot, to fetch a few litres of water which is potentially dangerous to health. But since 2019, Fair Future and Kawan Baik are changing things here, in this huge region of Prai Paha, Nggaha Oriangu in Sumba Timur. All now have access to a source of clean water via #waterconnections, to a school #sdmbinudita, to primary medical care #primarymedicalcare among others…
A truck full of sanitations and toilets built by us
This "Picture of the Day" shows you a truck loaded with metal constructions, which we transport to the rural villages of East Sumba. These are sanitary facilities built entirely by our teams in Rumah Kambera, which will be assembled in the houses -groups of houses-, so that the families can, for the first time in their lives, benefit from toilets and showers. Location: Prai Paha, East Sumba Regency, East Nusa Tenggara.
Rather than donating tons of medicine to cure these illnesses linked to lack of hygiene, we are building healthy sanitation facilities. Because now, Fair Future and Kawan Baik foundations have given them access to clean water, having toilets is possible.
Access to healthy toilets is an important challenge for children's health. Here in rural areas, very few households use sanitation facilities, often with serious health and environmental consequences. Fair Future and Kawan Baik know better than anyone that quality toilets save lives. They are essential to preserving the health of children by preventing the spread of disease through human faeces.
Together, learn to have a healthier life at home
This "Picture of the Day" shows some villagers from this ultra-rural region of East Sumba. They learn with all of us how to have a healthy, more harmonious life, thanks to the Fair Future & Kawan Baik teams on-site… and to the various publications our two foundations have produced for them. Location: Prai Paha, East Sumba Regency, East Nusa Tenggara
Partnerships for the objectives, because it is all together that they will manage to change things in their villages: How to no longer suffer the inconvenience of water stress and correctly use the #waterconnections facilities that are now available to them. Learn to take care of yourself and the children who make up the majority of children in the region.
To achieve this, we invite them to take care of themselves. By washing more because there is water here now. By no longer using detergent to cleanse the body, hair or private parts, children and newborns included. By treating a minor injury or health problem before it becomes severe. And perhaps more need to disinfect a wound with motor oil, gasoline or diesel, the misdeeds of addictions related to tobacco, Siripinang, and alcohol, especially in children. All this can be done within the framework of the various programs for access to healthcare initiated by Fair Future and Kawan Baik, in particular those linked to access to Primary Medical Care (PMC).
Live better and longer by drinking more, eating better and using the healthy sanitation facilities we have built; and so many things that we are discussing with them here in the field in East Sumba, with the foundation's socio-medical teams.