Samaritan’s Purse is supplying schools and homes in western Pailin province with water filters that help prevent disease and improve the quality of life for many people.
What is a beautiful setting worth without access to clean water? Rolling green hills and picturesque mountains surround Cambodians in Pailin province on the border with Thailand, but their sources of drinking water are often contaminated with bacteria such as E. coli. That’s why, over the past year, Samaritan’s Purse provided nine schools and over 2,500 families in the Southeast Asian nation with water filters that provide clean drinking water.
One primary school, with 200 students ranging from kindergarten to grade six, used to rely on a 25-foot-deep borehole for water. But the water they obtained from this source often gave their students and teachers gastrointestinal issues, which caused them to miss class.
Samaritan’s Purse partnered with the school to install a large filter. Relying on gravity, gravel, sand, and a few valves and pipes, this filter naturally rids water of any bacteria. It contains 10 taps to access the filtered drinking water, providing the school a solution that offers both teachers and students alike more time for education.
Primary school students give a thumbs up after filling their water bottles, because the clean water supplied by Samaritan’s Purse helps prevent disease that was once common there.
“Before the project, I frequently had diarrhea after drinking raw water from the borehole at school, which caused me to miss classes and negatively affected my grades,” said a student named Ratana. “Now, I drink water from the [school] filter every day, and we also have a smaller bio-sand filter at home. We love drinking water from these filters at school and home.”
Quenching Students’ Thirst with Living Water
Samaritan’s Purse also provides training in sanitation and hygiene practices, which the filter augments with its handwashing station created from three additional water taps. Now, students and faculty are soaping and rinsing their hands after they visit the restroom and before they eat, which reduces illness and disease.
Students show off their clean fingers at their new handwashing station.
“We are healthy and strong,” Ratana said. “My friends and I have not missed school since the filter has been installed and our grades have improved. Thank you, Samaritan’s Purse, for providing this excellent water treatment technology for our school.”
Even more importantly, God used our team to introduce Ratana and some of her friends to the Living Water, Jesus Christ, and they have since accepted Him as Lord and Savior.
Gaining Health through Hygiene
At another primary school in the same province, Samaritan’s Purse supplied a similar filter with a capacity of 1,000 liters of water, as well as two large rainwater harvest tanks that can hold up to 10,000 liters. As an additional aid to the school’s sanitation, we also provided a large incinerator for burning trash.
Samaritan’s Purse installed two large tanks at one primary school that can store 10,000 liters of fresh rainwater.
We trained students in cleanliness, including menstrual hygiene management for the children in the older grades. We also provided smaller bio-sand filters for the students’ homes that function with the same natural technology as the large filters.
One student at the school, Ju, is the second of three children in a family of farmers. She did not have a good grasp of proper sanitation practices, and, as a result, she often fell ill. Through the Samaritan’s Purse training, she learned how to wash her hands regularly, especially during her menstrual cycle.
Students formed a new habit of stopping by the handwashing station before they eat and after they visit the restroom.
Her teacher said, “Ju was very interested when she got to join the program and learn about good hygiene and sanitation.”
Today, she is healthier and she credits that to training provided by Samaritan’s Purse.
“I love my water system at school and at home,” she said.
Transforming the Daily Life of a Family
Sida, his wife, Dara, and their four young daughters, live in western Cambodia in a 16-by-13-foot wooden house with a zinc roof and walls. Sida works as a farmer and laborer, collecting cashew nuts and harvesting cassava, but these seasonal businesses with an average income of 30,000 to 50,000 riels ($7.50 to $12.50 USD) a day are hardly enough to provide for his family of six.
The family regularly gathered their water from a local river, which was riddled with contaminants and made his children sick. Their youngest often contracted dengue fever as well. During the dry season ranging from February to June or even into September, the river dried up quickly, so they resorted to purchasing the life-giving resource from a water truck. This, however, cost more than half of their overall income, but they felt they had no other choice to survive.
Samaritan’s Purse gave this precious family one of the 31,000 household bio-sand filters we have installed in Cambodia in the last 17 years. We also drilled a borehole near their home, which allowed them to collect water free of charge when they needed it. In addition, we trained the families in their village in safe hygiene, so they were able to abandon their habit of open defecation in the fields and instead use the latrine we provided.
Members of Sida’s family gratefully stand with their new bio-sand filter—one of 31,000 Samaritan’s Purse has distributed in Cambodia over the last 17 years.
Sida and his family are grateful to Samaritan’s Purse for all these investments in their health and hygiene. Now, his daughters are attending school more than they used to, and the money they are saving from no longer hiring the water truck is bolstering the family’s finances.
While working in their village, Samaritan’s Purse staffers shared the Gospel with Sida and Dara. Please pray that they would embrace the eternal hope of salvation.
Pray for others, like Ratana and her friends, that they would be discipled well in their new faith, growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
