I work on a cashew farm very far from downtown. During the rainy season, the road is slippery. It is difficult to live on the farm. However, we have no choice but to live in remote areas.
My husband got cholera and diarrhea because we drank water directly from the pond. Sometimes we boil the water, but that is difficult for my family. The hospital is so far from my village. It’s about 80km to get to downtown.
Nearby we only have a small clinic. When we got sick, the medical treatment was so expensive that we made the long trip to the hospital downtown anyway. This is because the health center in our village did not have enough of the medicine we needed.
After my family received a bio-sand water filter from CWEF, the water is now safe to drink. And the filter is easy to use. We don’t have to spend any time boiling water. We are healthy again. We do not experience stomach pain, diarrhea, or other waterborne illnesses.
So now my family has time to work in the field, and we can afford food and transportation to school for our children. We would like to thank you for your support in lessening our poverty by reducing our cost of living.
– Sokhim, villager from Kampong Thom province in Cambodia
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What a difference clean water makes! Dirty water leads to illnesses. Illnesses keep capable hardworking people from working. Without work, there is less money for food, school, and everything else. Clean water starts a cycle of healing and hope!
And in addition to Sokhim’s own perseverance and hard work, you are one big reason that Sokhim has clean water to drink today and that her family is now healthy and thriving! Your generosity is providing years of clean water for many hardworking families like Sokhim’s!
THANK YOU for partnering with CWEF and generously giving the gift of clean water!
Would you like to learn more about why biosand water filters are so life-changing? Click here to read our blog post that explains just that!
What is it like to live in a rural Cambodian village?
It looks like…
Plumes of red dust in the air. Trees and homes coated in rusty clay.
Farmers and laborers driving motos, trucks, bicycles, trailer-attached big motos, traveling over and around divots in the unpaved roads. Big vehicles create dust clouds that make it impossible to see oncoming traffic.
Houses raised on stilts to create shade and allow airflow for the people and animals below. There is no air conditioning in the 35-40 degree celsius (95-100 fahrenheit) heat.
Naked children who are dripping wet from their third bath of the day. A way to keep cool.
Jackfruit, mango, and lychee trees scattered around people’s properties; fruit that is ready to be shared between family members and neighbors.
A woman sitting in her husband’s car repair shop, sewing and altering clothing for a living.
Long-sleeved shirts, long pants, long socks, and hats to protect their skin from the blazing sun.
Head lamps as laborers work through the night to harvest rubber from the rubber tree fields.
Older aunties and grandmas who sit at home and take care of the children while their parents work.
A young child drinking a cup of water fetched from the nearby well.
Wells, rain water catchment systems, expensive pre-filtered water containers from the local market, or the nearby stream – all possible water sources for the people who live here.
Your life may look vastly different than the people living in rural Cambodia, but you do have at least one thing in common: Water.
Water makes life sustainable for all people – from rural Cambodians to those working on Wall Street. Without safe drinking water, sickness can take people from their jobs, familial roles, and cause pressures on a community as a whole. As such a basic necessity to thriving communities, it’s one way we can support the health of communities in rural Cambodia.
*All pictures were taken during CWEF’s visit to Kampung Thum province, Cambodia for a health training on safe water and the disbursement of water filters. We delivered 44 filters to families in need. These water filters will last each family 15+ years. Life-giving water to real people, a real community, a real impact.
Would you like to help give clean water to families living in remote Cambodian villages like this? Click here to donate!
In Khmer (the majority language in Cambodia), drinking water is called “tuk suat,” which directly translates to “water pretty.”
Many families in rural Cambodia have drinking water that is far from pretty, and instead of giving them the energy they need to work, can put them in the hospital with a hefty medical bill in tow.
Kanyo is from Kalai commune in Ratanakiri province, Cambodia. His village is an agricultural community that relies on bountiful rain during rainy season for their crops and for drinking water.
Their families live on small plots of land and survive on the rice, vegetables, and meat they can grow. In this area, if households have a family well, it is often unprotected and shallow.
“Before we got the water filter, our family drank rainwater that was collected in jars, well water, or stream water,” Kanyo shared.
The unhygienic water sources can cause waterborne illnesses that have a lasting effect on people’s ability to continue working and caring for their families.
“We understand that such water is not hygienic…and can cause various diseases such as diarrhea or stomach cramps and we often have to go to the doctor for treatment,” Kanyo said.
Can you imagine knowing your water will make you sick but not having any other choice?
In 2023, in partnership with local leaders, CWEF gave 60 bio-sand filters to households, including Kanyo’s household, in three villages.We checked in with Kanyo a year and a half after he received his filter, and it is still operational and working great. The filters should last 15+ years if maintained.
Kanyo is grateful for his water filter:
“Thank God for CWEF! After we received the water filter, our family’s life has improved. Because our entire family is free of diseases, we don’t have to spend as much on medical treatment as before. We have time to work happily.“
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Thank you for your generous donations through CWEF! Because of you, families in rural Cambodia like Kanyo’s are not only drinking healthy, clean, PRETTY water, they also have more money, greater health, and greater happiness. THANK YOU!!!
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“The water looked clear and clean,” Romaskean said, “but it started to give us diarrhea and hurt our stomachs.”
In partnership with CLEAN Cambodia, Concordia Welfare & Education Foundation (CWEF) gave Romaskean and her family a bio-sand filter in June 2023. Biosand filters, also called slow sand filters, use a combination of sand and a biofilm to remove pathogens, iron, and turbidity from the water. Users dump water into the top of the filter, and it slowly passes through the biofilm layer and then through the sand layers, purifying the water in the process.
The benefit of a biosand filter is they can last up to 15 years and don’t require electricity or fuel to work. Each day Romaskean must pour water into the biosand filter three times to keep the biofilm alive and active. Because Romaskean received training on how to maintain the water filter, she knows how to regularly add water and swirl the top later of sand. During a visit to her village in November 2024, CWEF staff checked-in on Romaskean and her biosand filter.
Romaskean with her brand-new water filter – thanks to donors like you!
She uses it every day and her family continues to no longer have the symptoms caused by waterborne illnesses. She is grateful for her long-lasting, easy to use purification system that provides clean drinking water to her whole family.
Romaskean lives in this house with 7 others. Her family farms cassava and rice. Their water source is a well dug behind their house.
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To those of you that support CWEF,THANK YOU for your generous giving! Because of donors like you, Romaskean can live her life free of waterborne illnesses! Now that’s LIFE-CHANGING!!
New to CWEF? Receive update e-mails from us by clicking here.
How common is school bullying? Over half of the 36,000 participants in a school-bullying survey conducted by Tencent reported being bullied at school. Whereas one-fourth of survey participants admitted to bullying others.
Because of the generosity of people like you who donate to our programs, CWEF and its nonprofit partners can host mental health classes for students in the Chinese province of Yunnan. In the hopes of protecting more students from the distress and dangers of bullying, the teachers of our mental health courses taught students all about this important issue!
The instructors shared real and heart-breaking stories about children that had been so badly bullied at school that they considered killing themselves. Through these stories, students could feel the deep and sometimes irreparable pain their actions can bring to someone else.
From there, the teachers talked about all the types of bullying: physical, verbal, social, and gender-based; and they gave the students clear examples of what these different types of bullying look like. Finally, they educated the students on how to protect themselves by avoiding playing alone far from other people, for example, or by telling someone in authority about the bullying when it occurs.
In all of this, the teachers emphasized how watching someone get bullied but doing nothing to stop it is just as harmful as being a bully yourself. Students were admonished to take courage, do the right thing, and stand up for others in need! Through this course, students gained a deeper understanding of school bullying, grasped concrete ways to protect themselves, and realized that they should not ignore bullying but stand up against it.
THANK YOU for caring so deeply for the children of China! And THANK YOU for demonstrating that heart by giving generously through CWEF to make life-changing classes like these possible for children from rural areas. You are equipping young people to become strong servant leaders in their own communities!
Students in the courtyard of Shigang Primary School, Yunnan, China
Shigang Primary School
Shigang Primary School is located in a rural area of the mountainous Chinese province called Yunnan. There 178 3rd – 6th grade children attend classes. Twenty-five percent of them are ‘left-behind children.’ This means that their parents work full-time in other cities and possibly only come home once or twice a year.
Students using 1 of the 10 water purification systems you provided
The Children Didn’t Have Clean Water
Shigang Primary School had a great need for cleaner water as well as more health education for its students. Because of you and your generous support, CWEF was able to provide 10 water purifications systems. Now all the children can have plenty of clean drinking water during the school day. CWEF also offered robust safety and health education classes. At the beginning of the class, as many as 40% of surveyed students were not regularly washing their hands. In the health education classes, students were taught all about germs. They also learned the importance of washing their hands and brushing their teeth. Your generous giving also provided the students of Shigang Primary School with very practical items like toothbrushes, toothpaste, and towels to help them practice what they’ve learned.
Students receiving the hygiene gifts you gave them, like toothbrushes and towels
Check out this beautiful view from the school basketball court!
Because of You, These Children Will Live Healthier and Happier
Through these health education courses and hygiene-related gifts, students grew in their knowledge and understanding of disease and how to prevent it. Now they will be able to share their new knowledge with their parents and families, creating a ripple effect throughout their community. Because of their access to clean water and deeper understanding of hygiene, students will suffer fewer sick days and benefit from increased participation in school helping them to grow up to be healthier happier adults.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR LOVE AND CARE FOR THE CHILDREN OF RURAL CHINA! Your generous giving through CWEF is bringing greater health and happiness to hundreds of Chinese children.
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Students attending an education class about on-campus , off-campus and food safety
Please enjoy part of an interview with Kanhchana Thoy, CWEF Director in Cambodia:
How many people in Cambodia do not have clean water? According to the latest available data from 2020, More than 12 million people in Cambodia (72% of the population) lack access to safe water. Most of them live in rural areas.
What keeps people in Cambodia from getting clean water? There are multiple factors. The first is that the income people earn is too low to afford better access. The second is a lack of knowledge about the nature and impact of the water they are using as well as lack of knowledge about how to make the water safer. The third major influence is cultural practices. For example, one group of rural people receiving clean water support from CWEF is the Jerai people. Their habit is to use mountain runoff water directly without boiling it, and they previously did not realize how nearby human waste and animals contaminate their water. But through your support, CWEF has been able to teach and equip the Jerai people with the knowledge, skills, and tools to have clean water on a daily basis.
How does CWEF choose who to give water filters to? Since the need is greatest in rural areas, we seek to work with low-income communities in rural areas of Cambodia. Also, we look for communities whose leaders are motivated and interested in partnering with us.
How many water filters did CWEF give out in Cambodia last year? Last year we gave out 30 biosand water filters in Chang Village and 30 biosand water filters to the villages of Deh and Samkanigh in Rattanakiri province. So far this year, we have distributed 60 biosand water filters in Davealeng village, Deh village, Banlung, and other villages.
Think of each of these individual families – their grandparents, parents, and children – who now not only understand how their drinking water was contaminated and causing illness, but they are now empowered to sustainably access clean water every day! These families are experiencing greater health and happiness and are spending less money cleaning their water and treating water-borne illnesses because of you and your generosity! What better way to transform someone’s life?Thank you so much for your heart for clean water for families in Cambodia!
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Yun’s family kept borrowing money. More and more money, more and more debt. What could he do? Everyday life simply cost too much. He couldn’t afford the things his family needed to survive.
Yun is a young man of twenty-five years old and lives in Kampong Thom Province in Cambodia.
He and his whole family kept falling ill over and over again. They returned to the hospital over and over again. Every month they needed medical treatment, and the treatments cost a lot.
More bills, more debt.
Yun wanted to earn money through his work as a farmer; but he often felt so physically terrible due to sickness that he couldn’t work very much, and he had no other way to earn more money for his family.
Yun standing with his family next to a CWEF biosand water filter
At home, when Yun and his family wanted to cook dinner or wash clothes, they retrieved water from a well. But they knew that the well water was dirty, and they feared what might happen to them if they drank dirty well water.
So they came up with another idea: collecting rainwater for drinking. The rainwater must be clean, they thought. But still the cycle continued of more illness and less work and more debt.
Thanks to your generosity, Yun’s family eventually received a biosand water filter through CWEF! Yun watched his family closely in the days and weeks after they began drinking the filtered water, and he happily realized that they came down with sicknesses much less often. He also suddenly discovered that he had more free time.
And on top of that, he had more energy. Enough time and energy to farm and earn more money and, even better, start saving money! Best of all, he received fewer and fewer expensive medical bills. Isn’t it amazing what clean water can do?
Now before he goes out into the fields to farm, Yun brings bottles of water from the the biosand water filter. And he will drink multiple glasses of filtered water before he goes out to the river to catch fish. Yun says, “Now, I am very happy after having received a Biosand Filter from Concordia Welfare & Education Foundation (CWEF) in 2019. All of my family members and I are healthy, and I hope that in the future my family’s living condition will be better.”
Yun thanks you for your generous donation and for supporting his living situation!
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Imagine for a minute — it’s the dead of winter. Suddenly the hot water and your shower at home both stop working. How long would you be able to make it?
That scenario is still the daily reality for school children all over rural China, including those in tiny Luoyan township — a small and unknown corner of China’s rural and remote southwest region.
In Luoyan township, there are nine primary schools, and many of the students attending these schools are boarding students. They live in dormitories on the school campus during the week because their families live too far away to be able to conveniently travel back and forth to school every morning and evening.
Thanks to your generous support of CWEF’s HEAL program, two of these schools — Tianjing Primary School and Gonghe Primary School — have became the first in the township to be able to offer warm showers to their students!
Inspecting new solar-heated shower rooms
In October 2022, the transformation of current facilities at the two schools into freshly renovated solar-heated shower rooms was completed, and our CWEF team members, along with local nonprofit, government, and school leaders, visited the Tianjing and Gonghe schools to conduct the official inspection and final acceptance of the project.
Prior to HEAL being launched at these two schools in 2022, none of the primary schools in Luoyan county had shower rooms or proper bathing facilities for the boarding students to use in order to keep clean and healthy while living and studying at school.
In addition to solar-heated shower rooms, your generous donations to the HEAL program also made it possible for both schools to receive much-needed upgrades to their dilapidated toilets and aging sewage systems, as well as 16 drinking water filter units to further ensure good health, sanitation, and hygiene for the students.
The HEAL program — which stands for “Health Education, Advocacy & Literacy” — is not just about buildings and health-related infrastructure like water filters, shower rooms, and sanitary toilets.
In conjunction with these upgrades to infrastructure, the CWEF team and our local partners also made important investments in the schools’ students and teachers themselves through the training of local health advocates and organizing health promotion activities.
Evaluation survey before health training
In November 2022, a health education program was initiated with 426 students and 31 teachers at Tianjing and Gonghe schools. Training sessions, demonstrations, and fun competitions were held to encourage healthy habits like washing hands, washing faces, brushing teeth, and keeping their school and dormitory environment clean and tidy.
Preparing for health training at Tianjing schoolHealth training at Gonghe Primary School
In addition, earlier in the year CWEF and our local partners brought in an experienced facilitator to guide 22 teachers from the two schools through a one-day mental health education workshop. The purpose of this course was to help the teachers understand and strengthen their own mental health, to learn to better understand the inner worlds of their young students, and to train the teachers in simple but effective ways to provide guidance and counseling to their students who may be struggling with poor mental health or challenges at home.
In 2022, your generous support of the HEAL program empowered our CWEF team and local partners to make important upgrades in the health-related infrastructure and external environment at Tianjing and Gonghe schools.
Jenny of CWEF with local partners
More importantly, your partnership has made valuable investments in the long-term physical, mental, and emotional health of the students who live and learn there.
With your help, 2023 will be a healthier and happier year for these special young people who are working hard to build a better future for themselves and their communities.
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p.s. — If you’d like to see an overview of all of CWEF’s work in rural China and Cambodia during 2022, you can watch this 3-minute video. Thank you for helping to make all of this good work possible!
This article was written by Joshua Lange – CWEF Executive Director.
Discover other rural Yunnan health initiatives that your giving makes possible here.
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In the tropical country of Cambodia an estimated 2-3 million people get their daily drinking water from unsafe water sources. Rural communities gather water from rainfall, wells, rivers, or standing water. The Cambodian government has set an ambitious goal for 100% of the population to have access to safe drinking water by 2025.
If properly installed and maintained, a BioSand water filter can last up to 25 years! This slow drip system removes 100% of waterborne worms and eggs. Surface water is cleaned in the low-tech device and is easily accessed directly from the filter. When a filter is installed at home, families can conveniently treat water at home to protect against disease.
Playing games with local kids in Ratanakiri
What difference do CWEF’s local partners make?
Pastor John is a farmer and serves a local congregation in his hometown in Ratanakiri province. As a local partner of CWEF, he provides important health training to families in his area who receive gifts of BioSand Water Filters, because of your generous giving.
When a family receives a water filter, they immediately experience many health benefits. Furthermore, local partners like Pastor John also train families in how to properly maintain their water filter, and lessons in sanitation and hygiene practices give families additional tools for preventing disease and improving their overall health.
In 2022 and 2023, CWEF will provide clean and safe drinking water via BioSand Water Filters for over 100 families in two rural communities in Ratanakiri province. The partnership with local Christian pastors like Pastor John, together with their congregation members in the Deh and Chang villages, will make your gift of safe drinking water more powerful and sustainable for the long-term.
What difference are you making by supporting CWEF BioSand Water Filters in Cambodia?
Globally, diarrhea is one of the leading causes of death in children under five years of age. Water-borne illnesses are preventable with the use of proper water treatment, such as the BioSand Water Filters you are supporting in Cambodia. Access to clean water, coupled with handwashing and other healthy hygiene habits, can bring a life-changing renewal of health to whole families. In particular, more children and their families in Deh and Chang villages in Ratanakiri will enjoy full health without the threat of malnutrition, dehydration, or death from diarrhea.
This past October, CWEF highlighted the importance of WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene), in connection with Global Handwashing Day on October 15.
Don’t forget — the next time you wash your hands or drink from an indoor faucet, you also can remember the gift of health that you have provided to families in rural Cambodia. Because of your generosity, they too can enjoy the immense gift of drinking water at home, and the improved health it brings.
Thank you for your partnership!
This article was written by Karin Semler, CWEF Board Member
