Dear Hope for Haiti Family,
Today is Global Handwashing Day, a global advocacy day dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding about the importance of handwashing as an effective and affordable way to prevent diseases and save lives. The COVID-19 pandemic provides an important reminder that one of the most effective ways to stop the spread of a virus is also one of the simplest: hand hygiene, especially through handwashing with soap. This year’s theme, Hand Hygiene for All, calls for all of society to achieve universal hand hygiene.
Less than half of Haitians in rural areas have access to clean water, and waterborne illnesses such as typhoid, cholera, and chronic diarrhea, are the cause of more than half the deaths in the country every year. Through our Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programs, our staff works directly with community leaders to distribute and train families on the proper use and maintenance of Sawyer Filtration systems that can be used at the household level to filter up to 1 million gallons of water over a span of 10 years.
Our Community Health team also holds public health lessons that cover handwashing, basic hygiene, and the prevention and treatment of water borne illnesses. In honor of Global Handwashing Day, the team will be holding trainings and hygiene kit distributions for families in four of our partner communities today.
YOU can give the gift of clean water! A small sustainable gift of $10 a month will equip one family with a Sawyer Water Filtration System that will provide clean and safe water for the next 10 years.
How YOUR Support Changes Lives: Clean Water Access
Meet Tiogene, who has received a water filtration system and shares the benefits with her family:
My name is Tiogene Mayline. I am 17 years old and in 9th grade, I have a little brother who is 8 years old, Tiogene Exime, and an adopted sister Calixite Renette who is 16 years old. We all live happily together with my mother and father. I would like to thank everyone who has supported Hope for Haiti so they could bring these filtration systems to protect our lives in the village against waterborne diseases, like cholera and other diseases that we can contract by drinking non-filtered water. We are very exposed to these contaminated water sources, so now that we have the home filtration system to treat our water and share with neighbors who have not had the chance to receive a filtration system, this will help us all fight these diseases. When I finish school, I want to be a doctor because I witness that a lot of people lost their lives because of a problem of access to healthcare in the village. Since we don’t have a functional dispensary in the village, I would like to find a scholarship and come back to my community to provide my services to the community.