By Lindsey Quinn
The image is striking: a little girl squats next to a filthy, garbage-laden reservoir to fill her water bottle. She’s about to dip her container into the nauseating pool. Your instinct may be to look away, but families in Bawana – a poor community outside Delhi, India – can’t avoid the problem.
Sponsored children face the dilemma every day. Natasha Das, Children International’s programs manager, reports, “One hundred percent of children in the most recent parasite study conducted by CI have been found to suffer from intestinal parasites.” She adds, “Lack of clean water is a major hurdle in the community along with poor drainage system and few community toilets.”
Unfortunately, it is the overall condition in Bawana that exacts this terrible toll. More than 25,000 families are crammed into nine blocks of a neighborhood that frequently floods during monsoon season. Trash litters open spaces in the community, and many people choose to openly defecate instead of using squalid public toilets. And all of this takes place near the exposed pipes and open collection areas that families must use for their water supply. Not that there are many opportunities to use them – the pipes work only three times a day, and the pressure can be so low that it’s incredibly time consuming to get fresh water. In fact, people get less than half of the daily water health experts say they need to thrive, about 2 out of the 5 liters of water recommended daily. See conditions in Bawana for yourself.
A young girl attempts to collect drinking water at a public faucet outside Delhi, India.
Sponsored youth, Children International and Planet Water Foundation staff, and community members work together to install the much-needed water purification AquaTowers.
Children International, along with the Planet Water Foundation, is working to address the dire sanitary and water conditions in Bawana. As part of our larger Water, Hygiene and Sanitation (WASH) initiatives, we have built AquaTowers at three public schools in the community. See how an AquaTower is built.
Constructed collaboratively with the community, each AquaTower supplies safe, clean drinking water for up to one thousand people daily. Children International’s youth play a special role in deploying the towers. Not only are CI’s Youth Health Corps involved in construction efforts, but these youth conduct biweekly water and sanitation educational sessions for schoolchildren.
Now that Children International and Planet Water are improving Bawana’s water supply (see how an AquaTower works), the image of a sick little girl crouched above dank water soon will be a thing of the past. In its place is the picture of a happy, healthy child who can access safe drinking water with ease and dignity.
Children International and Planet Water Foundation’s initiatives have had a positive impact around the globe. Our three-part goal is 1) to provide access to clean water for up to 70,000 people living in impoverished communities; 2) equip impoverished communities in the Philippines with emergency water systems to be deployed during natural disasters; and 3) conduct school- and community-based water, health and hygiene education programs. As of October 2014, we have installed 26 AquaTowers in Asia and Latin America and 10 emergency water systems in the Philippines to provide mobile units for safe water during typhoons and other disasters.
New AquaTowers in Bawana, India, mean that children can drink safe, clean water.
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