Clean Water for 500 Families in Cambodia

Maiy was stressed and worried. His family was "underwater."

As a new husband to his wife Chantou and adoptive father to her two sons, Maiy was feeling the weight of the family’s debt. They had taken out a microfinance loan to buy equipment for their family’s small farming operation, but now Maiy couldn’t even stay healthy enough to keep working every day in the fields in order to pay down the debt.

He and the rest of the family would frequently fall ill with diarrhea and painful stomach aches. At the time, they didn’t know the cause of their sickness: their daily habit of drinking the rainwater that they collected at their home in rural Tboung Khmum province, Cambodia.

With their frequent waterborne illness, the family’s medical expenses piled on top of their other daily expenses, which piled on top of their debt. Maiy couldn’t see a way out.

Then, through a connection with their local Christan church, Maiy and Chantou learned about a BioSand Water Filter project in their community, made possible by your generous gifts to CWEF.

They learned more about the water filters from their pastor, and they attended a training session where they learned about the dangers of drinking unsafe water, as well as different ways they could protect themselves and their kids.

Finally, they received the gift of a BioSand Water Filter in 2021. Since then, they have had the great blessing of drinking clean and safe water every day.

Maiy recently shared:

“Now, I feel relaxed and happy after getting our Biosand Water Filter from CWEF. We can filter either rainwater or well water for our family’s daily drinking needs. I also regularly bottle the water from the filter and take it with me to the fields when I go out to work.”

Maiy, Chantou, and their boys don’t get sick as often as they did before, and now Maiy has plenty of time and energy to do his farming work each day. He estimates that they will have the microfinance loan debt paid off in just 7 more months.

As a committed Christian and a member of their local church, Maiy and Chantou have also been led to participate as trained local advocates in the broader community health and development program called HEAL ("Health Education, Advocacy & Literacy"), which is sponsored by CWEF and facilitated in partnership with the local pastor, Sareun, and his wife, Ly. The team of HEAL advocates in their community have participated in a series of in-depth training sessions, and are committed to being agents of positive change in their area.  

Maiy and his family now want to do what they can to bless and serve others in their community, as they themselves have been blessed through the local church, in partnership with CWEF.

Maiy closed our conversation with this simple and selfless note of gratitude and hope:

“My family members all got healthier now, and I hope to see that God will use my family in the future to share the Gospel with others.”

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Links:

• What is a Biosand Water Filter?
• CWEF - What We Do

The late spring and early summer was a challenging season in Cambodia, as an outbreak of new COVID-19 cases began to spread more widely around the country. This temporarily put many activities and all travel on hold. Thankfully, due to containment measures and an aggressive vaccination program, the daily numbers have diminished somewhat after the height of the outbreak in early July.

As you can imagine holistic community health has never been more important in the rural areas where CWEF and its partners serve, so we are extremely grateful for your increasing generosity to ensure that this important work can continue at this crucial time.

Your gifts help to power the HEAL program in Tboung Khmum province and southern Kratie province. HEAL provides a platform for encouraging sustainable long-term health improvements in people’s lives. HEAL project participants are treated as partners as they develop awareness and receive training to serve as community health advocates for their neighbors and family members. The HEAL program provides needed infrastructure, such as water filters and water wells, along with deeper health and hygiene education for the whole community.

We're thankful that in spite of the recent challenges in Cambodia, the CWEF team there was able to continue working with our local partner churches and trained community advocates in Tboung Khmum and Kratie to distribute materials and train 30 additional families for the construction and maintenance of their new Biosand Water Filter.

In addition, we also worked with a local contractor to dig 6 new water wells in the area, which will better serve the needs of these same 30 families. 

Finally, Kanhchana Thoy of CWEF was able to return to Tboung Khmum in mid-August to work with our local partners to facilitate HEAL TOT3 (Training of Trainers, Session #3) – in small groups due to government-mandated meeting restrictions -- with HEAL community health advocates there. For this work, our Cambodia team uses the mindsets and resources from the Global CHE (Community Health Evangelism) Network.

Next, the CWEF Cambodia team plans to work with our local partners in Tboung Khmum and Kratie to take water samples for testing to ensure safe water quality, while also following up with the families who recently received their new Biosand Water Filters to ensure they are using proper maintenance and cleaning procedures. Finally, the team will prepare to distribute materials and provide training to 40 additional families in the area who will be blessed with a new Biosand Water Filter (and a stronger, healthier life as a result) in late 2021 or early 2022. 

Thank you for making all of this possible with your generous prayers and giving!

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Links:

• What is a BioSand Water Filter?
• CWEF web site
• Connect with CWEF - Subscribe and Follow