To start this News, let us remind you of an essential element in all of our lives!
Water connects all aspects of life. Access to clean water and sanitation can quickly turn problems into potentials – giving people time for school and work, and helping to improve the health of women, children, and families, this all around the world…
…But, this is all the more true in the regions where Fair Future Foundation and Kawan Baik Indonesia work every day, here in the southernmost regions of Indonesia, especially after the disaster which has hit hard those regions in which we work and live in our Base Camp, in Rumah Kambera.
Today in East Sumba almost 4 out of 5 people do not have access to a toilet, sufficient water, or clean water!
Toilets
Like water, toilets are essential. Toilets prevent the spread of disease and provide health, privacy, and safety. As you can see from the photos attached to this News, sanitary solutions are made from odds and ends. Fair Future tries to provide local communities with solutions to ensure this essential need of life, that of going to the toilet in a safe way.
- Access to clean water (we are not talking about drinking water here) protects people from disease and it saves lives, just because it is there;
- Access to clean, potable water has the power to turn time spent into time saved when the water source is near and not hours of walking;
- Access to safe drinking water turns problems into potentials: Unblock education, economic prosperity, and improve health.
- …
Water
Water allows those who have access to it to define their own future. Fair Future has already helped tens of thousands of people, but only together can we reach more people.
Historically, women in the outermost regions of eastern Indonesia have faced an impossible choice when it comes to providing water to their families: A certain death without water or possible death due to unsafe water consumption. For these women from East Indonesia, collecting water is a twice-daily task and takes up to six hours a day, kilometers of walking, or with a buffalo to transport as many jerry cans as possible.
The 25 photos attached to this News show how families in this region live with the limited sanitation resources they have. Sometimes branches and leaves of trees, a hole in the ground, make up the toilets as in the header photo of this News. Very often, the toilets are the place in which we do everything, dishes, shower, wash clothes … But this when there is water. And right now, clean water is lacking, water is lacking!
In order to study, map, reference actions, needs, and what remains to be done, we have put in place a map that shows all the locations where the foundation and friends are active, with our volunteers and its little sister, Kawan Baik Indonesia.
For us, this tool is invaluable to us, but also to local authorities, volunteers, and all who help us rebuild Sumba. What has been done, is being done now, and what remains for us to do! Note that this map is continuously updated!
As you know, Fair Future, Kawan Baik Foundations, and the Indonesian Red Cross are starting a “post-emergency” program, linked to access to clean water.
To begin with, and in the next couple of days, we will start a pilot project that aims to provide clean water to nearly 40 families, or more than 250 people, a good third of whom are children. (ref. this News here)
This project is detailed in the .PDF document that you can download here. This presentation explains why, how, and the costs of construction, drilling, and equipment of this “water point”.
The Fair Future Foundation team, who wrote this news, directly from what is the largest medical and social camp in the eastern region of Indonesia (NTT), the home of Fair Future and Kawan Baik Indonesia, who is called “Rumah Kambera“, house of Kambera, named after the village that welcomes us, in the heart of the area most devastated by this disaster.
Thank you for your interest and benevolence. See you soon.
