Let's Raise USD 60,000 by 15th January 2022 to give clean water for children in Sumba.
This year a child could have his/her life changed because of you.
It starts with a gift.
In Sumba, water changes everything. For us who are fortunate enough to have clean water access at the tip of our fingers, it may be hard to imagine how life is like without clean water. That’s not the case for children and families in Sumba Island, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. For years, they must bear the reality of living without direct access to clean water. Based on the latest National Statistics, almost 50% of Sumba residents or around 300,000 people have no access to water.
This forces children and mothers to spend 1-4 hours of their day, walking for miles under the heat of Sumba’s unforgiving sun and across uphill terrain to fetch 5-10 liters of water EVERYDAY. Many children have no choice but to walk back and forth 5 to 10 times a day to bring enough water for the household needs in a day. Meanwhile, in dry seasons they can only rely on murky rainwater that they have collected in reused oil drums during the rainy season.
The consequences are dire. The amount of time and energy children spend daily fetching water is burdensome, leaving them with very little time to study and play. Tika* (10 years old) is one of the children who has to walk miles from her Grandma’s house at the top of the hill. She lives separately from her parents because she has to accompany her Grandma and help her fetch water every day. Tika and her friends would walk downhill on very dangerous and slippery terrain and sometimes they encounter wild animals like bulls, wild horses and boars, exposing them to physical and life-threatening danger. Her journey back home from the water spring is also not easy, she must walk uphill carrying a jerry can with both her hands and one water bucket on her head. In one day, she could go back and forth more than 10 times, 5 times in the morning, and 5 times in the evening.
“I always feel tired in the evening and so sleepy, I wanted to do my homework, but I ended up sleeping. I feel like my day is always about water, water and water,” said Tika.
For mothers, the responsibility to fetch water adds another burden for them besides having to run a household and often the family farm. It leaves them with neither time to take care of themselves nor be able to participate in more productive work that can generate better income or to empower themselves.
Healthwise, the lack of clean water exposes families to bad hygiene and sanitation which lead them to encounter various water-borne diseases such as diarrhoea, pneumonia and other bacteria-related diseases. In Indonesia, pneumonia and diarrhoea are the first and second highest killers for children under five years old, and East Nusa Tenggara province, including Sumba has the highest cases of these two diseases.
Recently Save the Children met with children in one of the villages in Sumba and asked them to draw their Christmas wish. Some of them draw water.
“I wish next year I don’t have to walk far to fetch water. I want to know how it feels to have water flowing from the faucet like what I usually see on TV” said Yosua* (10 years old).
“I want to be a teacher. I need to study hard so one day I could go to college in town. If we have water in our house, I would not be too tired to study” Yosua continued.
This Christmas, Save the Children and Charles Monat want to make Tika, Yosua and other Sumba children’s Christmas wishes start to come true. We aim to raise USD 60,000 (IDR 840 millions) by 15th January 2022 to support the building of a spring water reservoir and install solar-powered water pumps as well as 4.000 metres of steel pipes to channel water for 2.500 families, 2 schools and 1 health center in one village in Sumba Island serving more than 31,000 lives.
This year, make your Christmas more special by sharing a gift of clean water.
Your donation will change the lives of Sumba children forever.
