Transform lives with clean water in Honduras

Cooking dinner, taking a bath, ensuring that your children’s clothes are clean — there are countless basic daily tasks for which water is a necessity. For people in the small Honduran community of El Pital, these tasks become challenges when the existing water system leaves them without a drop coming from the tap. As local resident Doña Gladys explains, El Pital’s population has increased significantly in recent decades and has outgrown its old water source, and “we need a more powerful water system that will be able to bring water to everyone.” Rather than feeling discouraged, Gladys envisions a nearby future in which families in this community will not only have enough water throughout the year for daily chores but also be able to have uncontaminated, drinkable water flowing to their homes for the first time.

“The community, and especially I, feel very motivated. I’m happy and grateful because water is incredibly important for our households,” Gladys says of the Clean Water project that Un Mundo has been facilitating since 2011. This past summer, student volunteers from Duke University helped to construct a grey-water filtration system that purifies the waste water of 27 homes, and next summer this same student group will begin construction of a system that will bring clean water to as may as 90 households. “I know that, if all of us in the community join together and contribute to the water project and make the goals a reality, we’re going to be a great example for all of the surrounding communities,” Gladys says with glimmering eyes. “With a better water system, we’re going to be a much better developed community than we once were.”

Though she is consummately humble, Gladys cannot hide her pride in her six children, all of whom are kind, intelligent, and hardworking, and one of whom is the community’s only college graduate. Her commitment to helping see the water project through to fruition is for her children, she explains: “It’s for this future generation that I give my all. When these projects come to our community, I feel happy, contented, motivated, and grateful to God for giving me my children and enabling me to help them benefit from the project. This is what motivates me to move forward every day.” One of her teenaged daughters smiles shyly from the kitchen, where she’s sweeping the dirt floor in her high school uniform before sitting down to begin her homework.

El Pital’s water project is well underway but will require a mighty effort in the months to come, and it’s the support of donors like you that helps us all to keep the kind of hope that Gladys has as we strive to make the dream of clean water for the community a reality. Please help us to spread the word about our shared dream, and consider donating to the water project again if you’re able. Additionally, keep your eye out for opportunities to contribute on Giving Tuesday, December 1 — sign up for our email list on our website or Facebook if you haven’t already. From Gladys, her kids, Un Mundo, and all of the people in El Pital, thank you from the bottom of our hearts, and have a very happy Thanksgiving!