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Lives and Livelihoods are Interconnected

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In a village, the livelihoods of many extended families as well as their struggles are intertwined. Poverty alleviation is a process. The phrase “development work” implies that lasting change requires time and intentionality. To understand the needs within a village, CWEF conducts interviews. Discovering the full situation of families facing poverty allows CWEF to more effectively partner in overcoming these challenges.

Consider walking in the shoes of 46-year-old Yicun from Yanmaidi village in Yunnan province.

Like most others in Yanmaidi, Yicun is Lisu – one of China’s many ethnic minority groups. She attended school through grade 9, which is typical for her generation in this area. Yicun and her husband have two adult children, a 22 year-old son who is a construction worker in another province and an 18 year-old daughter who is in nursing school. On their small plot of land, Yicun and her family farm tobacco and chili peppers as their main source of income. The costs for her daughter’s nursing education consume a majority of the annual income. Yicun and her husband are proud of their efforts to save and pay for her schooling. They look forward to the day when she graduates, in three years, with the hope that their quality of life will improve.

Health issues impair the family. Her mother-in-law suffers from gastric ulcers, which cause dizziness and more recently fainting spells. Consequently, she is unable to assist with farm labor. Yicun has suffered for years from a gynecological disease. A visiting county doctor diagnosed her condition and prescribed medication. But the side effects were very severe and prevented her from work in the fields.

The Yanmaidi village has had access to a drinking water system for years, but the structures are increasingly breaking down. The whole village’s water system is connected. Consequently, the neighbor’s problems affect Yicun’s access to reliable clean water. In an attempt to address the issue, the villagers each chipped in a little money and elected a person to become the designated on-call pipe repairman.

Yicun’s husband was chosen, but the work was overwhelmingly unmanageable. The frequent calls, at any hour of the day or night, prevented him from tending to his own farm and livelihood. He recently quit. These days, Yicun needs to go to the water source, a spring, to collect water for her own family and also for other villagers.

You can enable CWEF to partner with villagers like Yicun by helping install or repair drinking water systems and by providing health training to improve their overall health and sanitation. Development is a process, and you can take part by helping families like Yicun’s to thrive.

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Training Student Health Advocates

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In his late 50’s, Mr. Tie has held a solid position at the Shuangjiang County Center for Disease Control and Prevention in south west Yunnan province. This region is home to many ethnic minority groups in villages that have been lagging behind in development. CWEF has partnered with county offices to install drinking water systems for many of these villages. He has witnessed and helped to facilitate many projects for rural families facing poverty.

The installation of a drinking water system changes the daily life of villagers in many ways. But to achieve improved health, people need to learn how to prevent disease and to receive all the benefits of accessible water. CWEF provides this type of educational support through the Health Education Advocacy & Literacy (HEAL) project.  One of the cornerstones of the HEAL program is training health advocates, who model and teach good hygiene practices including hand washing, teeth brushing, and disease prevention measures.

CWEF health projects director Jenny Chu enlisted the help of Mr. Tie to initiate the HEAL project at Banggai primary school. His background in disease prevention was instrumental in conducting baseline surveys of the children’s health situations and then creating easy-to-understand educational materials for the students and teachers.

Although this was the first time Mr. Tie worked with young children, he felt the training was very successful. Teaching children good hygiene habits can last a life-time. He believes that through the health education program, “educated students can influence children who are the same age and even their parents.” This is a core component of the HEAL program, that children and adults receive training and are advocates for good health practices like hand washing and proper food preparation techniques.

As Mr. Tie approaches retirement, he hopes to continue serving with CWEF as a HEAL project volunteer. His training was well received by the primary school students and teachers.  He hopes to “have more time to focus on health training and pass on the health knowledge to more people in need.” CWEF is thankful for partners like Mr. Tie who are using their talents and knowledge to help create thriving communities.

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Remembering the Spring, Hoping for the Future

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For hundreds of years, Chinese wisdom has advocated gratefulness through the proverb, “When you drink the water, remember the spring.” For those of us who enjoy constant access to water through the tap, we rarely consider the originating source. For young mother, Jifen, walking to the spring is a recent memory and drinking water from a faucet is still a new luxury.

Infrastructures have gradually been introduced to villages in Lufeng county, Yunnan province, in southwestern China. Like many ethnic minority groups, the Miao people live in mountainous areas where arable farmland is scarce. They live in small villages that are often isolated from larger towns. Fortunately, for Jifen and her husband, a cement road was built within the last few years, replacing the dirt and muddy pathways to the village.

Today, Jifen is especially grateful. Every day, she still remembers the spring. Before the installation of a drinking water system in her village, Jifen made five trips per day to and from a spring to carry water to her home—totaling 1.25 miles a day. The water was used for their own drinking, for household needs, and for watering a small number of pigs, sheep, and cattle.

Jifen, who has an elementary education, takes care of her toddler-age son and helps her husband to raise their livestock and to farm radishes, corn, and rice. They try to sell livestock for income, but find it challenging to sell the animals at a fair price. Jifen’s husband used to work outside the village. Due to their son’s weak health, he returned to the village to help with the farm work and to try to earn extra income through the livestock sales.

The village’s drinking water system was completed on Oct. 15, 2018. A grant from CWEF helped the village to afford this life-changing infrastructure. Families from the village participated in the labor to dig the cisterns and pipe trenches. Before the water system, about half of the village families had solar water heaters in their homes, but without a piped water source the heaters were seldom used. Now, the availability of solar-heated hot water has dramatically improved day to day life for taking a bath, washing clothes, and feeding animals.

As Jifen looks at her young son, she hopes that he will “be healthy, learn a lot, and become a good person.” She envisions a future where he can earn money and help them fulfil the dream of building a new home in the village. Their livelihood should continue to improve as they feel the impact of a ready and reliable water source. Irrigation systems are already being considered, which would allow families like Jifen and her husband to grow new types of crops for sale.

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