Barbie lives with her husband and their 5 children, ages 1 through 15, in the Miskitu Indian village of Kahkabila in Southern Nicaragua. Barbie recently participated in a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene class given by blueEnergy. As a school teacher in her community, she understands and can share her knowledge from this training with her students.

About the water filter, Barbie comments: “It is very important because we have had to drink contaminated water. The filter makes it possible to decontaminate the water and therefore maintain a good health, especially for the children.”

Thank you so much Ted and Pam for helping support Barbie and her family.  They are now confident their children will be much more healthy and safe. Thank you so much for this generous gift!

Aminta Martinez and her large family (5 adults and 5 children – the youngest is one years old) share a small wooden house in the back of the Miskitu Indian village of Kahkabila. Her husband is a fisherman and Aminta is, like most women in the village, dedicated to raising her children and taking care of the house.

Being the person in charge of hauling the water and cooking, Aminta is well aware of her responsibility to keep her family healthy: “This is a good hygiene project. I am glad I could benefit from a filter; now I know that the water my children and family drink is safe. Other people from the community that could not build their filter at the same time now want to get one.”

Thank you so much James and Julie for helping support Aminta and her family! Aminta is really happy to know her family will be much safer now with clean drinking water. She would not have been able to make this happen if it were not for the generocity of you both. Thank you!

Maria and her husband Ronald live in Bluefields, Nicaragua. The couple has two children, a thirteen-year-old girl named Maria and a twelve-year-old boy named Ronald. Maria’s filter is particularly useful during the summertime when the well level falls and the water becomes more contaminated. The addition of the filter in their household has helped eradicate this contamination problem. The family now filters the well water and once filtered, the water is always very clear. When asked how she is liking the filter, Maria Elena responded that “the filter is great, I like it a lot. It changed our lives”.

Cindy lives with her 10-year-old son, her sister, and her sister’s newborn baby in the Old Bank neighborhood of Bluefields, Nicaragua. Originally from the Creole community of Haulover in northeastern Nicaragua, Cindy has been living in Old Bank for several years.

Before the filter was installed, the whole family drank water straight from a well located next to the Bluefields lagoon. Contaminants from the lagoon, such as oil, trash, and fecal waste, seeped into the well and resulted in high rates of infection throughout the neighborhood.

Thanks to the filter, however, the family now has clean drinking water and Cindy is grateful for this simple solution, “especially for the baby.”

Indira lives with her mother and two daughters in Bluefields, Nicaragua. During the day, Indira goes to work and her mother takes care of the children when they come home from school. As the primary caregiver, Indira’s mother is also the main user and proponent of the new filter.

She has seen almost immediate benefits from its instillation. “The filter is very good because the water that [comes] out of it is clear and nice to drink. Besides, it improves the whole family’s health, especially the girls who are more fragile. They used to get sick frequently but since we have had the filter, we have not had this problem a single time.”

Thank you Dennis for providing a water filter for this family!

Aleyda lives with her mother, Nidia, her husband, Jairo, and the couple’s four children in Nicaragua. Two of the children are teenagers and the other two are under the age of 5.

Jairo has severe skin problems and the well water makes his condition worse. Since the filter was installed, he has seen slow improvement of his condition. The family is thrilled with the newly installed filter. Aleyda says that the family “likes the filter a lot. We use it everyday for cooking, drinking and even showering!”

Aleyda’s house is clustered close to four other families and she has been happily sharing the filtered water with the neighboring households. The filter is providing five families with clean drinking, bathing, and cooking water.

Thank you so much Wells Trust for this kind donation! It is greatly enhancing Aleyda’s quality of life as well as others in her community.