Clean Water Protects Children from Sickness
Emmanuel and Donatile live in rural Rwanda with their two children, Renee and Elisee. A few years ago, when the government provided public water taps for their community, they were hopeful that they would no longer be reliant on water from Mirayi Lake. But they soon discovered that the tap water wasn’t the solution they had hoped.
First, the public taps were not reliable. Without explanation, water was not always available from the taps. Second, the water from the tap was not clean, either. Donatile recalls putting the water from the tap into a clean container. Later, she would find the clean container would have a different color from the dirty water.
“I used to have issues of my kids getting sick and having diarrhea constantly”, recalls Donatile. This surprised her, because to protect her children from sickness, she usually boiled water before drinking it. She admits that when they couldn’t afford firewood to boil their water, the family would drink dirty water without treating it. And she knows that her children were still drinking water from unsafe sources when she wasn’t watching them closely enough.
Then, their family was selected to receive a SAM3 Household Filter from 20 Liters and the Water Project. Before they received their filter, they received training on how to take care and clean the filter.
Donatile is grateful for their filter, because it protects her children from sicknesses. She tells us, “After I received the filter my kids got fond of drinking water that comes from the filter. They would specifically ask for it. Even the kids from the neighboring houses would come and ask us to give them filtered water. And that’s when I saw a change because my kids were not getting sick as often as they used to.”
