How Safe Water is Helping Fathers and Families
When Omar and Jasmine got married, they were excited to start a family, but little did they know how hard it would be to keep their children safe. Sadly, they were not the only parents in their small village of La Union, Mexico, who faced this challenge. In the first few months of their children’s lives, Omar and Jasmine realized the tap water was a threat to their family. They had two options: use dirty tap water sourced from a spring where animals would also bathe or travel to a far-away, larger city to buy bottled water. Drinking the tap water made their family sick. But buying the bottled water meant Omar and Jasmine didn’t have enough money for food.
Without safe water, it was difficult for Omar to protect and provide for his family well.
“When the babies came along, we had to get bottled water for them,” said Omar.“ It was so expensive, and we had to wait for transportation to go, pay for the water, and pay for transportation back. They charged a fee for every bottle on the transport—like it was a person—and we would bring four or six bottles back.” As the children grew, the family tried to save money by using the spring water.
Despite boiling the spring water, it was still filled with contaminants that caused illness.
“Boiling and chlorinating the water wasn’t always enough,” said Jasmine. “We’d still get illnesses and infections. When the kids got sick, they would miss school for a week or more during the treatment and recovery.” With support from dedicated partners, Water Mission completed a safe water project in La Union. Today, water from the fenced-off stream is gravity-fed into a treatment system, stored in a 90,000-liter tank, and flows down to La Union. The system produces nearly 70,000 liters per day, which provides water to all the residents of La Union.
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