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Twelve-year-old Kankham used to walk two hours a day to collect water. This World Water Day, on 22 March, we are celebrating how access to clean water changed Kankham’s childhood and the lives of many other children like him.
Kankham loves playing football after school with his friends. But he’s only been able to do this for the past year.
Living in a remote village in Laos with few resources and facilities, Kankham spent a lot of his childhood collecting water from a river far from home. He would wake up at dawn every morning to help his mother, Khonejai, fetch water for the day for drinking and cleaning. Together, they carried three buckets, a total of 25L, of water back home. It was a tiresome one-hour trek up and down the hills of Houaphanh Province.
In the evenings, Kankham and his mother repeated their walk to the river: Kankham carrying a 5L bucket and Khonejai, two 10L buckets. The water they collected was just enough to last them through the night. In the morning they would make the trek to the river again.
For half of the year, during Laos’ wet season, the walk to the river was especially tiresome and dangerous. Kankham and his mother navigated muddy and slippery paths as they balanced buckets full of water.
A few years ago, Kankham became very sick with diarrhoea after drinking unsafe water from the river. “We had to walk 8kms to the hospital,” Khonejai says. “It was a hard time for the family.”
Kankham, age 12, and his mother Khonejai (pictured above) used to walk two hours every day to collect water from a river far from their remote village in Houaphanh Province. A newly built clean water system in their community means Kankham has more time to learn and play.
About 829,000 people – including more than a third of children – are estimated to die each year from diarrhoea because of unsafe drinking water, and poor sanitation and hygiene. In Laos, only 55 per cent of people have access to basic handwashing facilities, including clean water and soap.
In 2022 ChildFund in Laos worked with local partners and community members to build a clean water system in Kankham’s village, benefiting more than 400 people. The gravity-fed water system collects and filters water from the river, and stores it in a large tank in the village. Community members helped to build a plumbing system, connecting the water in the tank directly to 88 houses. Today, more than 100 families in Kankham’s village are accessing clean water instantly through taps in their homes.
ChildFund in Laos and local partners helped to install a clean water system in Kankham’s village in 2022. Kankham and his mother Khonejai (pictured above) can now access clean water from the comfort and safety of their own home.
Khonejai says Kankham is healthier and safer now that they no longer need to walk the long distance to the river, and can get clean water at home. She also says: “I have more time to spend with my family.”
For Kankham, he can get back to doing the things he loves. “I have more time in the morning to enjoy breakfast and get ready for school,” Kankham says. “After class, I have free time to play football with my friends.”
This project is supported by the Australian Government through the Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP).
Children in Kankham’s village, in remote Laos, enjoy clean, running water in their community for the first time.
How you can help change children’s lives this World Water Day
This World Water Day, on 22 March, you can give the gift of clean water and sanitation to children like Kankham who need it most. Everyone should have the right to access clean water and sanitation around the globe.
ChildFund Australia’s Gifts For Good range is a fantastic initiative for donations this World Water Day. Gifts For Good incorporates a number of water-based gifts that have the power to change lives.
You can help provide children and families overseas with access to clean water and sanitation by donating:
A hand pump well: This will provide clean water for children and their families for drinking, cleaning and bathing. Children may no longer have to make long, dangerous journeys on foot to collect water from unreliable, contaminated sources. This will also offer children the protection from the risk of deadly waterborne diseases.
A deepwater borehole: Imagine your impact when you give the gift of clean water that a whole school – or even an entire community – can rely upon for years to come.
A hand washing station: This is a simple gift with the power to help everyone in a community improve sanitation and hygiene, and stay healthy.
By ChildFund Australia and ChildFund Timor-Leste
In the mountainous countryside of eastern Timor-Leste, several hours from the country’s capital Dili, there is a village that is extremely poor and so remote that families living there need to walk almost three hours just to reach the nearest health facility.
It is a world away for many people in Australia, but for Ana and her family, it is home.
At only two years old, Ana has her whole life ahead of her. But extreme poverty and the challenging circumstances in which Ana was born into, are subjecting her to childhood malnutrition and preventing her from reaching her full potential.
Ana and her family live in a household of 17 people, who are together surviving on less than $4 a week. Until recently, Ana’s diet consisted of mostly porridge made from rice and water.
‘I was so afraid … Ana didn’t want to eat’
About 12 months ago, Ana experienced childhood malnutrition. She was extremely unwell and her life was at risk. A severe worm infection worsened Ana’s condition. Her mother, Maria, noticed that Ana was losing her appetite and that she had stomach pains and diarrhoea. Eventually, Ana stopped eating and began losing the already little energy and strength that she had.
Maria was extremely worried about Ana, and called on a community health volunteer in the village for help.
“I was so afraid when I saw Ana didn’t want to eat,” Maria said.
The community health volunteer, trained through ChildFund’s health and nutrition program, immediately referred Ana to be treated for malnutrition.
Ana received medication to treat her worm infection and was placed in a supplementary feeding program where she received nutritious food. Eventually, Ana became stronger and her health improved.
Apart from a small grocery store 10km away that sells basic supplies, there are no health or education facilities near Ana’s community. Few families can afford their own vehicle, and public transport to the nearest health facility passes through the village only once a day. This is why community health volunteers, who live and work in the villages they serve, are essential to helping children like Ana stay safe and healthy.
The burden of childhood malnutrition
Nearly 1 in 2 children, or 49 per cent, of children under the age of five in Timor-Leste are stunted – a condition caused by a form of malnutrition – compared to only 2 per cent in Australia.
Children like Ana are more likely to become malnourished because of poverty and a lack of access to health facilities and knowledge in their communities about good nutrition.
Childhood malnutrition can have lasting negative implications on a child, their family and community. It increases healthcare costs, and can prevent children from finishing school, which can limit their future job opportunities, perpetuating a cycle of poverty.
How can we prevent childhood malnutrition?
Nearly 1 in 2 deaths in children under the age of five are linked to a form of malnutrition. But malnutrition in children is preventable and treatable.
With your support, we can help train community health volunteers to regularly monitor children’s growth for signs of malnutrition. These volunteers also learn how to identify common childhood illnesses and make referrals to health specialists. They also help ensure mothers attend postnatal and antenatal care, and lead mother and father support groups. The work of these local health volunteers in rural and remote communities, where health facilities and doctors, midwives and nurses are hard to access, can be lifesaving for children like Ana.
With your donation to ChildFund’s Malnutrition Appeal, we can also provide supplementary feeding programs to treat malnutrition in children, support families to access de-worming medication for their children, and run community cooking, nutrition and health workshops for parents and caregivers.
Through a ChildFund-supported cooking workshop, Maria learnt about the nutrition content of various local foods, and how to include some of these foods in Ana’s diet.
Today, Ana has fully recovered from childhood malnutrition, and Maria incorporates vegetables such as moringa, a highly nutritious plant that she sometimes gets from neighbours or other members of her community, in the rice porridge she makes for Ana.
Good nutrition is essential for a child’s health and development, which is why it is a key focus of ChildFund’s health programs. The first 1,000 days – from the time a woman becomes pregnant to her child’s second birthday – is critical to a child’s healthy development.
ChildFund’s health and nutrition program in Timor-Leste focuses on supporting mothers like Maria to care for themselves and their children during these first 1,000 days, and longer. Make a donation to ChildFund’s Malnutrition Appeal today and you can help to train community health volunteers, assist parents to access child health support groups, or facilitate cooking workshops for families.
