Help a Child: Provide Access to Water in Nigeria

Dear Supporters, Friends and Family of Serendipity Healthcare Foundation,

The last you heard from us, the good people of Gadan were also raising funds to build a Sand Dam as an additional source of water supply for their community to tide them over during the dry season. The survey has been concluded and a site was chosen by the water steering committee members that will serve the entire community in a central location.

Work has commenced on this laudable project in the community as a form of water preservation using sand dam and the community has also contributed manpower to help. It is at its initial stage of construction however the community members have been so eager that they have started sourcing for water at the site. Water purifiers were distributed to the women collecting water at the site to safeguard against the emergence of water borne diseases.

We are proud to report that we were able to rehabilitate a hand pump that was installed by the state government 30 years ago but had previously stopped working again due to a major technical fault.

A visit to the Primary Healthcare Centre showed a reduction in the rate of water borne diseases in the outpatient department last month from 5 in 10 cases to 3 in 10 cases as a result of improvement of hygiene practices by the community.

We are really appreciative of all the support, love and passion You our supporters have shown to the children of Gadan and for this we say THANK YOU!!Much work is still to be done but having come this long way, we are happy to have achieved all this; we encourage you to still give us your support and to promote our project in any and every way you can.

You can follow us on twitter @serendipityHea1 or like our Facebook page/serenhealthcare or LinkedIn/Samirah Faruk or simply send us an email at serenhealthcare@gmail.com for further enquires.

With much love and gratitude,

Samirah Faruk

Project Leader

Links:

• Sand dam

Dear Supporters, friends and family of Serendipity Healthcare Foundation,

Global Handwashing day came and our continued trainings on hygiene improvement amongst the children of Gadan was a welcome developement as the day reinforced all our campaign for keeping their hands clean. Of particular note is a story we have of Hansau (Not real name) who has never gone to school in her entire life yet she is one of our advocates for being clean.

Hansau starts each day walking about with a bar of soap in her hands to remind everyone on the need to wash their hands with soap; we noticed her during the campaign and asked her why she had a bar of soap in her hand and she said in the local language "Ai, na ga wanke hannu na da sabulu ya kara min kyau don bani da dauda kuma ba da kowa na gani" literal transalation is "I have seen that washing my hands with soap has made me pretty as I no longer have dirt on my body as everyone can see". Hilarious it was but she was pretty serious about it and refused to drop the soap for a second. We asked the father for how long she had been carrying on like this and he said for the past one month since our last training; now all the children want to be like Hansau he said.

Apart from our marking the global handwashing day, work has started on building a sand dam in the community to take advantage of the rains that fall during the season; two sites have been identified within the community and we called in some geological surveys to evaluate if the site would be good for the sand dam. We are yet to get the report back on the survey whence the community with the help of the local governing council can start working on building this dam which will go a long way to helping them access more water for the community.

We want to sincerely thank YOU our supporters, friends and family for being there for us thus far, for the feedback, for advice on how to do things better, however we still need your help to fulfill our goal and target of achieving access to water for the children of Gadan with the trainings on good hygiene practices to make their lives better.

You can follow us on twitter @serendipityHea1 or like our facebook page/serenhealthcare or simply drop us an email at serenhealthcare@gmail.com. We are currently updating our website to serve you better and will let you know as soon as it is concluded.

 Yours faithfully,

Samirah Faruk

Project Leader

Links:

• Handwash