#WEARETHEFUTURE | For several months, nearly a hundred people have been on the ground here in East Sumba, often in challenging conditions. Website updates have been infrequent, and we apologize for that. Internet access is limited in our area. However, the #ZeroMalaria, #WaterConnections and #PrimaryMedicalCare projects yield extraordinary results. It's all possible because of all of you, and your support allows us to save so many lives.
Picture of the day – A single picture can tell you everything
These images are taken by Kawan Baik Indonesia, Fair Future and their teamsOur work, a particular moment, a book we published, a project we are working on, or a landscape. These images are taken by Kawan Baik Indonesia, Fair Future and their teams on the ground.
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Our programs and actions are illustrated with only one photograph.
Discover how we provide Social, medical, and humanitarian support in one picture.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.