By Wen Hung | Project Leader
“It’s always cheerful to see children’s smiles while they are drinking clean water. Their smiles say it all and make us feel that it’s worth the effort. However, we found that not only schools but also families need clear water in Vinh Long Province. This is because most of the time children and their families stay at home and still use river water in their daily lives. So, we began to investigate water to assess the effectiveness of the program implementation.”
- Message from the social worker in TFCF Vietnam Branch
Finding the root of the problem
In July 2019, we spent three days visiting the cooperation area ‘’ Dong Phu’’, families and relevant government units to understand the government's planning and residents' expectation. After visiting 2 water factories and 26 families, we got some information as follows:
Dong Phu has 11 hamlets, but only 2 water factories are available for 5 hamlets. The factories get water from the ground or rivers and supply water to the resident’s houses after purifying the water. One water factory was built 25 years ago; however, there are lots of broken equipment which is difficult to deliver water.Another water factory was built in 2017 and the factory is still expanding its water purifier system to benefit more areas.
We visited Dong Phu families in July 2019. There were 26 families with 95 residents, including 47 children and 48 adults. After visiting, we found 26 families used river water in daily lives, includes cooking. Most of them just pumped the water from the river, filled the bucket and used the water until the alum sank to the bottom. However, only 2 families have powders to purify water to make it cleaner.
Next challenge of the project
Through the survey, we found they have some diseases caused by water, like gastrointestinal disease (17.9%)skin diseases(18.9%) and kidney disease(4.2%)…etc. Even families know they need to use clean water due to the pollution in the river, they didn’t have money to connect the tap water.
After the survey, we think we need to help more poor families connect the tap water and have clean water in daily life to stay away from diseases. We sincerely hope that there will be more smiles on their faces. Therefore, your ongoing support will give them a change to have a better and healthy life.
Thank you for being with us! Wish you all the best!
With gratitude,
Wen Hung
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