New logistics, medical and data collection teams will return to the field in the coming days.

The program for the next few months is the continuation and finalization of ongoing projects related to access to clean and non-lethal water. Access to medical care for rural communities, especially emergency care. But also a huge work of mapping and analysis of issues related to malnutrition, especially that which affects children here. And of course, find a way to prevent the systematic destruction of cereal crops by pests.

Hello to all good friends of Fair Future and Kawan Baik? How are you today? As part of our actions in the field, all guided by our ethical charter, our principles of impartiality, independence, and neutrality, we inform you of the projects that are in progress, those that are coming, and our schedules.

The next few months will be very busy for our teams on-site in eastern Indonesia, around the Rumah Kambera base camp in Nusa Tenggara Timur. Large displacements, immense logistics, tons of equipment, thousands of patients… These months will also be important for the administrative teams, who remain on the job within the framework of Rumah Baik, the new Base Camp of the Foundation, and Kawan Baik in Denpasar. Their mission is essential, we cannot work without their resources and the tools they provide to teams in the field.

As you know, Fair Future for more than 15 years has been offering medical assistance to the most vulnerable people, those affected by epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from health care. Over the years, the foundation has evolved a lot in its approaches to medical care. For example, access to clean, non-lethal water has become one of our top priorities because water is simply life.

Most of the patients we treat are sick because they don’t have access to a clean water source. And then, as medical professionals, it is somehow absurd to give medical treatment to a patient, giving them a glass of contaminated water to absorb their medical treatment. Therefore, the Water Connections programs carried out by Fair Future and Kawan Baik in the field are totally in line with the projects for access to better health, a reduction in infant mortality, and the problems of malnutrition that we all encounter days here with families.

Two new teams will leave by road, with the Truck of Life, next June 14, to join the base camp of Rumah Kambera, and the teams already there. In total, a significant reinforcement of members of Fair Future and Kawan Baik, including nursing staff.

Over the next few months, here are a list of actions and/or programs in favor of people living in rural areas of East Sumba, that we will put in place, or continue:

The water connections program, clean & safe water in rural areas

Water Connections Network: Finishing the water network is essential for these 2,500 people, 75% of whom are children. After more than 6 months of work, the essential is done, namely that clean water is arriving in the village. Its distribution to the 250 families has not yet been completed. We still have to build 5 tanks of 6,000 liters each and carry out at least one deep drilling in order to reach the most remote houses in the #sdmbimudita region.

Sanitary facilities: Namely the construction of 10 central shower points, each comprising two toilets, a laundry washing point, and of course, a clean water collection point (access to a source of clean water for drinking, eating, and cooking).

Education and training: This project is carried out thanks to our two foundations, of course, but just like the Mbinudita school project that we built, it is the villagers who work with us and who work on the construction projects. With us, they learn in order to be able to do it again later. Nevertheless, such an installation which develops on nearly 3 hectares, it is necessary that the inhabitants of the villages and the families can make it function, and maintain it in the state in order to avoid the problems which could arise. In this sense, we have developed training that has already been in place since the beginning of the construction of the #waterconnections project.

Collection of data related to the living conditions of families from rural areas

As part of actions related to access to medical care, food, and access to a healthier life, but also in order to effectively combat the harmful effects of malnutrition on families and children, Fair Future and Kawan Baik begin a new period of visits to villages and families. The mapping of social problems is essential for us to put in place effective actions to fight poverty, famine, and all the problems that families face, all the families in this region, one of the poorest in Indonesia, Southeast Asia;

In the development of maps, social mapping is an essential element in order to find the best solutions. Indeed, you have to know what is happening before finding the most appropriate and adapted solutions, which are also innovative;

Alone we cannot do this work, it is indeed nearly 350,000 people that we would have to go and meet. Therefore, a work of funds and learning in favor of the local authorities, notably the PKK (Pemberdayaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga), which is a primordial and essential actor in this work;

Fair Future and Kawan Baik have developed interactive tools -in collaboration with Google-, to collect information from a location or an area without internet access on the living conditions of families, villages, or communities. This allows us to set up sources of information allowing the global but also individual visualization of a problem, but also to follow a solution over the long term.

As part of our work, we will therefore continue this work of meeting families, where they live, as we have been doing for more than a year;

We are also going to start a week of training for the PKK volunteers and all the many people. The tools developed by Fair Future and Kawan Baik will allow them to have the best information, follow it over the long term, be able to update it via online tools, and use it for the purposes of setting up emergency actions if necessary.

Access to medical care and particularly to emergency care in rural areas, where no health center exists – Provide basic medical care to all children, with a first aid kit for each school/village, in the most rural areas of Sumba

Communities and children do not have access to even the most basic medical care. Faced with this for years, the foundation decided to put in place a simple, proven, and very effective measure: The training of school teachers, a first aid kit, and long-term monitoring of managers from our center in Sumba East.

The First Aid-Kit Project: A child on his way to school walks for 2 hours, without shoes, barefoot… He does it twice a day, there and back. By bad luck, he steps on a very sharp stone, he gets hurt. Or as we often see, a dog bites him deep in the leg.

The risks of infections here are enormous because people do not have access to water and even less to drinking water. When they have some, you have to boil it, it takes hours because you have to make a fire. And there is no medical center here, the closest is sometimes two hours away by scooter, but most people don’t own a scooter. Therefore, this wound will have a huge risk of infection. It can lead to the death of a child if families are not given the opportunity to deal with this injury before it becomes serious, very serious, too serious.

Fair Future and Kawan Baik Indonesia create first-aid access programs for children living in regions where no first-aid solution exists. It is simply a matter of training school teachers in rural and ultra-peripheral areas in the basic principle, providing them with a few simple tools in the form of a first aid kit containing the necessary equipment so that a wound, a burn, or other urgent health problem can be attempted to be resolved quickly. This program has proven itself for years because it is one of the fundamentals of the Foundation.

We create training forums within the framework of Rumah Kambera or on the places of school activity during our multiple visits on-site, we teach the theoretical and practical bases in order to disinfect, how to make a bandage, how to give a simple drug to reduce a high fever, and follow up in case of special requests. It simply saves lives!

After two years of Pandemic, it is now time for our teams to get back to work on this project which is so vital for many families. From the month of June, training, and first aid kits will be distributed, and supplied by our teams in the most isolated schools.

Where no one ever goes, or almost! Together, with all of you, we save lives!

Denpasar, Waingapu, Le Vaud – Fair Future, the 07.06.2022/aw