Lives in Progress…
Door-to-door training, every day
Through the Primary Medical Care program, Kawan Sehat health workers provide treatment for fevers, wounds, and malaria in villages lacking access to doctors. They carry essential medicines, adhere to established medical protocols, and refer emergency cases promptly to prevent delays in care.
Building toilets and promoting sanitation to improve health and dignity in ultra-rural communities.
The first idea was to treat people at the source of their health problems because our medical teams and us allow the expression: “-We were a little tired of giving medicine with a glass of inedible water. …”. And as we have told you many times before, the vast majority of patients who come to us are primarily because of the poor quality of the water they use. But also because they simply don’t have enough or no water.
Sanitary facilities, showers, toilets, a wastewater collection tank… This was a pilot project for the foundation. Today it is something normal. How do we build healthy, ecological, environmentally friendly sanitary facilities using mainly local materials (apart from sand, iron and cement)? How not to waste the water we found by drilling so deep here in Mbinudita? Where had drilling never been attempted? How to reuse wastewater to be able to water the gardens, the plants, and the vegetables that do so much good to and improve the lives of everyone here? It was a challenge, but it is now a reality.
We are building safe and healthy sanitation facilities for these reasons: Ending defecation in the open rather than in toilets will have “transformational benefits” for the most vulnerable people in East Sumba. Open defecation is when people defecate in the open -for example, in fields, forests, bushes, lakes and rivers rather than toilets. We find that of the hundreds of thousands of people who practice open defecation, 91% live in rural areas. An increase in the population of the regions in which we work leads to a localized increase in open defecation.
Building a water storage tank is something simple but complicated at the same time. Working day and sometimes night too, sleeping under challenging conditions, eating little and walking a lot… This is the life of the Fair Future and Kawan Baik teams in the field, every day for months with the support and unconditional support of the villages where we are setting up a new program. We are very involved in all the constructions, be it the reservoirs but also the healthy sanitary installations, the water connections, the filtration systems, and so many other things which, put together, create infrastructures which make them more useful, simpler life.
For a few months -thanks to the Water Connections program–, the families are feeling healthier, happier and have much more energy. The villagers, who are 100% farmers, are much less sick, and they are in better health. Vegetable gardens are created, and an economy is built. Women and children spend much less time fetching water from wells far from homes. As a result, children spend more time in school, and adults have more time to do things they couldn’t do before. On the other hand, water remains the absolute priority of each of the 250 families of #mbinudita, well before everything else! Today, we are building healthy sanitary facilities for the village and the villagers. Like all other families living in ultra-rural areas, people have never had access to toilets or a place to bathe or do laundry.
