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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If I can wash, it’s because I have water now!
In this "Picture of the Day", a young girl from the village of #Mbinudita is happy because now she and her family have access to water, so they can wash. Before for her, washing was once every two weeks, even once a month for others from the same village. Location: Prai Paha, East Sumba Regency, East Nusa Tenggara
The consequences of not washing on the body are disastrous: Development of microbes on the skin causing many skin diseases such as Scabies, ringworm, or dermatosis, and also much more graceful diseases: Typhoid fever, Hepatitis A, and Cholera. Not being able to wash leads to death linked to the development of the diseases mentioned. It is also a strong signal of the lack of water in a village. Not being able to wash for lack of water also means not being able to eat and drink enough.
Practising good personal hygiene is essential to allow proper functioning of the skin (breathing, secretions). Washing keeps the skin healthy, relaxes the body and maintains a positive self-image. This is why Fair Future and Kawan Baik develop solutions for access to better health by providing access to healthy and clean water. The cheapest and most effective drug.
These teachers who save lives!
In this "Picture of the Day" The work of these female superheroes, who have performed hundreds of primary medical procedures since December 2022. This program is because there is no access to medical care here. These women are the only possible resources, and what they do is extraordinary. Location: East Sumba – NTT.
The primary medical care program that Fair Future and Kawan Baik have set up is unique worldwide. A reminder? This program aims to provide theoretical and practical means to teachers in isolated villages to offer first medical care in the event of injury or illness of a child or an adult. It's simply outstanding; it saves lives.
It focuses on specific populations, groups and communities that are excluded from healthcare access systems and left behind. It offers knowledge and tools to teachers in ultra-rural villages to heal and save lives. It is the teachers of schools isolated from everything who provide first aid; 95% of them are women. There is no doctor or access road here, and the nearest health centre is often hours away. Fracture? Malaria? Dengue? A snake bite? A burn? A choking person? Acute fever in a child? These women, these teachers from isolated villages, are also caregivers, real heroines in their interventions.
On-site Primary Medical Care Program Assessment
This primary medical care program in ultra-rural areas, which we initiated and started last year, is extraordinary, it saves lives. Since December 2022, the participants in the primary medical care program – who are the village teachers – have been providing first aid to children and villagers. They treat wounds, diseases, malaria, dengue fever. Images taken by teachers in their villages.
In principle, we should eat every day!
In this "Picture of the Day" a man who must be 40 years old (but who seems much older), is going to prepare the little rice he has found in the house. It will be for his meal or all those of the week certainly. He cleans it with the wind blowing, throwing it in the air from his rattan basket in front of his house. Here in the ultra-rural villages, few people own rice fields, so they have to buy rice when they can. Location: Desa Mbinudita – Prai Paha.
Eating healthy here? It is very complicated, it is even impossible. The water available is scarce, even if we change this in certain regions. All the meals for these families in East Sumba – where Fair Future and Kawan Baik set up socio-medical projects – consist of corn and a little rice when the families have it.
Vegetables are far too rare or you have to look for those found in the forest, in nature. Meat is almost never present, or when there is a feast they will kill a pig or goat to cook it and share it with friends and family. Fruits? Maybe one day, in a photo, they saw some.
In #sdmbinudita, East-Sumba, the #waterconnections project provides access to healthy and clean water sources close to families' houses. They can cook, and have a vegetable garden to grow their own vegetables. Gradually, habits change, and the health of the villagers improves.
Water Connections, look at all we’ve done!
Look at what has been done in the last 20 months, it’s simply extraordinary because doing this in this region was a priori impossible, but we did it. We are at the end of the line in the Water Connections project, we have “only” a few things left to build, including a huge 25,000-liter tank. Here is the project map for you, so you can see all that has been done in this ultra-rural region, one of the poorest in Southeast Asia.
Young girls now go to school more than before
This "Picture of the Day" depicts a 12-year-old girl who goes to the #sdmbinudita school built by Fair Future and Kawan Baik, in East Sumba, in order to follow the lessons given by one of the five teachers. She is lucky to be able to go there every day. Location: SD Mbinudita Prai Paha.
Quality education for all is one of the most robust and proven pillars of sustainable development. You still have to be able to go to school. This is all the more true when you are a girl. But these successes come up against significant challenges in developing regions due to high levels of poverty, lack of food, drinking water and other emergencies to which we are trying to find solutions (access to basic healthcare and Primary Medical Care, for example).
Indeed, the main task of almost all these girls of school age in the ultra-rural villages where we are active is to fetch water that is not very clean and not very healthy, far from their homes. To do this, they have to walk for hours carrying jerrycans.
In #sdmbinudita, East-Sumba, the #waterconnections project provides access to healthy and clean water sources close to residential homes. From now on, it does not take much time to have water in quantity and quality. And so young girls can go to school.
Health, happiness & sustainable development
What does Sustainable Development Goals mean in a nutshell for Fair Future? Reduce poverty (and not eradicate it because it is impossible), increase access to basic and primary medical care, improve access to technology and knowledge, reduce the number of undernourished people, be better health, reduce antimicrobial resistance, provide quality education for all, eliminate gender inequalities, reduce all forms of discrimination against women and girls, ensure universal protection and equitable access to clean, non-lethal water at an affordable cost and much more. Our teams on the ground manage to change things, that’s obvious, but it takes time.
Elthon plays with Mbinudita’s children
This "Picture of the Day" features Kawan Elthon and a dozen children who are schoolchildren at our school in East Sumba, at the top of the highest hill in Mbinudita. These kids, all of us here, have seen them grow, change, and have a much better life than when we arrived here in 2019 to build a new school. The activities we organize with the more than 120 children who walk here to school are part of our daily work. We also play a lot together, and they participate in various tasks at school, in addition to learning to read and write.
All these children, we all know them – as well as their families – and we call them by their first names. They have a very different life from other kids in Indonesia. For them, life is combined with "hardness". But together, we are making a difference for all these families from the ultra-rural areas of eastern Indonesia.
Elthon is one of the collaborators of Fair Future and Kawan Baik Indonesia foundations. It is thanks to him that you can see the photos that we publish on the website, or on social networks. Among other things, he is in charge of the documentation and most importantly, he is a "child of East Sumba – Sumba Timur".
Washing hands to preserve health and life
Some forms of gastrointestinal and respiratory infections can lead to serious complications, especially in young children, the elderly, or people with weakened immune systems. This is why hand washing prevents the spread of disease. Indeed, many infectious and contagious diseases can be transmitted from one person to another through contaminated hands. These illnesses include gastrointestinal infections, such as salmonellosis, and respiratory infections, such as the flu, colds, and coronavirus (COVID-19). Washing your hands properly with water (when available) and soap will prevent the spread of germs, bacteria and viruses that cause these illnesses.
Deep drilling project in Laindatang
This "picture of the day" shows you a family from the village of Mabtakapidu/Laindatang, which like all the others, lives in the greatest destitution and extreme poverty. Malnutrition and infant mortality are high here.
Yes, this is one of the situations we want to act on as quickly as possible here. Fair Future and Kawan Baik are trying to help this community by offering them the possibility of having clean water in quantity in the village. We have the project to drill on-site at nearly 80m deep and build two or three reservoirs. We have found a water source close to the houses; only the funding is missing for the drilling. We have already received the submersible pump and solar panels for the site, and this is thanks to a private company in Europe.
The families of the village of Laindatang have a tough life, which is a euphemism. They do not eat every day, never meat, rarely vegetables. Rice is expensive, so they mix it with corn when they still have it and pests haven't destroyed it. To wash in the sense of "taking a shower" is maybe once a month for everyone. Her life is organized with less than two litres of water per person per day
To get poor-quality water here, the nearest well is a ten-hour walk there and back. You have to leave in the evening to return in the morning with only a few 5-10 litre jerrycans.
Read more here Kawan's.
The school we built, in Mbinudita, East Sumba
On these "Picture of the Day", we show you the school we built in 2020 and 2021 in Sumba East. In the beginning, there were three classes and 60 students. Today in February 2023, there are five classes and over 120 students.
This school is an integral part of the #rebuildmbinudita project, which consists of helping an entire rural community – more than 270 families, more than 2500 people – to have a better life.
This school, Kawan Baik and Fair Future Foundations built it in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, with materials that, for the most part, were delivered from Surabaya (more than 1500 kilometres away). It took almost two years of working in difficult conditions for all of us, for the local families to realize this. To build such a building without water, without electricity, without a road leading to the site.
Mbinudita? It is the name of a village in the heart of one of the most complicated regions in terms of access to water, food and medical care. Here, before our "arrival," there was no school, now there is one, the biggest and most beautiful of all in the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur, of East Sumba (Sumba Timur). Here, families now have access to toilets, drinking water, etc.
This picture of the day was taken by Alexandre Wettstein, by Drone, on the SD Mbinudita school website
A traditional well in a rural area of East Sumba
This "picture of the day" shows you how families manage to have water at home for eating, drinking, bathing, taking care of children, watering livestock and animals, and watering gardens.
The vast majority of villages in this region, where Fair Future and Kawan Baik have been operating for so many years, do not have access to clean water, among other things! This well, dug by hand by the villagers themselves, is about 15 meters deep.
Most of the time, it is dry, or when it has water, it is of a colour that does not encourage consumption. It can be brown, beige, or chocolate, even with a little "consistency, thick" when there is little water in the well: This is because of a mixture of soil, sediments, bacteria and others microbes which reproduce there favourably. Or, it can be really white because the level of limestone is too high. In all cases, and of all colours, this water is bad and, in the medium term, dangerous for the health of families.
Teachers in rural villages heal and save lives!
The magic of this "Primary Medica Care" program? It's just that it's unique in the world and it works. The first promotion of about sixty teachers who have followed the training in primary medical care in rural areas, tells us about their "exploits" and their work as first aiders. They gain self-confidence, that's the most important thing, and we note it.
The teachers, in their village and thanks to the knowledge and medical care equipment they acquired during the courses last December, provide medical care for injured or sick children. Medical care is provided and lives are saved.
Teachers provide primary medical care
The magic of this "Primary Medica Care" program? It's just that it's unique in the world and it works. The first batch of sixty teachers who have followed the training in primary medical care in rural areas, tell us about their "exploits" and their work as rescuers. They take confidence in themselves it is the most important, and we note it. Medical care is given to children of sick or injured adults. Lives are being saved.
Having water allows them to drink and eat, to live better
This "Picture of the Day" shows you a person watering their garden in order to grow their own vegetables for the family at home.
The Water Connections program works wonderfully, water makes things possible here in East Sumba, and that's what it's all about. Clean water at home for eating, drinking and having a healthy life.
For months, Fair Future and Kawan Baik Indonesia foundations have seen a fundamental change in the habits of families who benefit from the "Water Connections" program. Gardens are created, mainy gardens actually. People eat better, drink more, have more energy and are less sick. This observation fills us with joy and comforts us in our choices and decisions. Access to better health has always been the foundation's primary mission, and healing people by giving them water is incredible.
Gardens appear in front of the small houses of wood, earth and bamboo, on the site of our school and everywhere in the village, near one of the thirty water tanks we have built. Previously, water for watering gardens was not a family's priority, with only a few litres a day available for everything. Consequently, new activities are created, and new opportunities arise. Families are gradually being rebuilt. They acquire a healthier life, and they are much healthier too.
Water Connections – This is the name of this vast program managed by the Fair Future and Kawan Baik foundations. It gives access to clean water and healthy toilets to the rural populations of Indonesia.
New sanitary facilities for a healthier life
This "Picture of the Day" shows you the healthy sanitation facilities we are building here in East Sumba. Having provided access to drinking water – through the Water Connections program – to these 270 families in Mbinudita, East Sumba also offers the possibility of having toilets for the first time in these villages. And it was unimaginable a few months ago for these families living in rural areas.
Can you imagine what the health consequences are for these hundreds, these thousands of families who defecate behind a tree or the house? In a hole and having no water to flush the place? We see it every day here. Sick children suffering from diarrhoea are the daily life of our medical teams.
The Fair Future and Kawan Baik foundations have made more than 20 sanitary fixtures, many of which look like this. Clean and hygienic, with water to rinse them off after use, showers to wash up, and safety tanks to collect wastewater. And now families have a healthier life. People are less sick, children suffer less from diarrhoea, and infant mortality is decreasing and will continue to decline.
Water Connections – This vast program is supported by the Fair Future and Kawan Baik foundations. It provides access to drinking water and clean toilets to rural populations in Indonesia.