Women are integral to Indonesia’s success. They are also an essential part of the success of the projects we carry out in East Sumba.

Achieving gender equality and empowering women are fundamental to the fight against extreme poverty, hunger and malnutrition.

Women and girls in East Sumba (and other outermost regions of Indonesia) play an essential and increasingly recognized role in the sustainability of households and communities in rural areas. Even if sometimes it does not seem to be the case!

Women comprise a large part of the formal and informal agricultural labour and perform most domestic tasks, such as fetching water within rural families and households. Women also contribute significantly to agricultural production, food security and nutrition, land and natural resource management, and building capacity to adapt to climate change.

Women here play an essential role in the rural economy:

It is mainly the ones who look after the welfare of their families, children and elderly relatives, whom they feed and care for. In rural areas here in East Sumba, women do unpaid work, including fetching firewood for cooking and water for drinking, eating and bathing several times a day.

The images you can see below highlight the incredible work of women and young girls in the rural village of Mbinudita in East Sumba.

Women do most of the work.

These strong women are grandmothers, mothers and sometimes young women, girls too. They are the ones who take care of the heavy work of the family: Carrying, walking, gardening, cooking, caring for, taking care of, going shopping… That’s how it goes here.

These strong women spend most of their time fetching water, just a few litres, to meet the needs of all family members. To do this, they have to walk for a long time, sometimes far, to bring a few litres of water into the house, which is not always clean and healthy. These people living in the rural areas of East Sumba consume between 2 and 3 litres of water per day and per person for all the needs of the day, such as cooking, eating, drinking, washing and watering the animals too. That’s why they work hard with all of us, to have water in quantity and quality in all the houses in the region… And it works thanks to them, thanks to the Water Connection project.

They are doing a tremendous job with all of us here.

As part of the “water connections” project, they are the ones that transport the sand and other construction materials that will be used to manufacture a 6,500-litre Ferro-cement tank (to date, the foundation has been built more than ten). But also the sanitary facilities that the Kawan Baik and Fair Future teams have been building for months here on the Mbinudta site.

The equipment is loaded on their heads, and they sing traditional songs to give themselves courage. It’s incredible to see, to experience too. Where these women clear a path, no one else can pass. You have to have experience, put on good shoes for you otherwise you slip and fall. But for them, no problem, even barefoot. They are powerful women who wonderfully represent a proud, strong nation.

We are all very proud of you all, ladies. Thank you for everything.

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A beautiful day to you from East Sumba.
Rumah Kambera – Socio-Medical base camp, the 06.09.2022