How our guests are powering a sanitation revolution – over Zoom!

... and you've been answering their call!

Singaporean students and families –joined by people and organisations from around the world– have ignited a W.A.S.H (Water, Sanitation, Hygiene) revolution.

Starting in 2016, through individual action (first through real visits, and since COVID via Zoom), our guests pulled off a miracle. Together with the local families, they designed the world’s most cost-efficient sanitation system: the Safe Water Gardens (SWG).

During COVID, our guests discovered that we could extend the system and add running water and clean drinking water as well. We are discovering now that the new W.A.S.H systems enable us also to

• jointly design healthy diets on the available 15 cents (!!) per meal per person, and
• help families design successful microfarming and homestay businesses.

Recent milestones

Our first pilot village

Apr 2021: Thanks to the fundraising efforts of many families, schools, and small companies from around the world, we did our first whole village in Bintan –refer to phase 3 of our vision. All 37 families received a complete W.A.S.H upgrade, cheered on by our guests over Zoom. Running water makes farming possible, so the local families decided to use their $100 start-up microfarming funds to become the lime-fruit capital of Bintan 🙂 . In August they reported that all 5 different species of lime were growing even better than expected. Moreover, many families gained the confidence to run a homestay in the future – and they now look forward to welcoming their Zoom friends in real life … as soon as the borders re-open!

Our second pilot village.

Oct 2021: Thanks to a grant from the Rotary Club we installed lifelong life-saving sanitation in our second small village, in Indonesia’s most polluted region: the Citarum river area in Java, home to 25 million people, many of whom do not have sanitation at all. A total of 30 systems served 92 families, showing that safe water and sanitation is affordable to even the poorest communities.

What was particularly great about this village is that we could demonstrate that the dream of Indonesia’s standards board is feasible: several families can indeed share a single system. Another wonderful result was to see that the surveys revealed that even the poorest families felt that good WASH systems are so important that they are ready to contribute to receiving such systems through micro-loans, and that they want to assume full ownership over the systems.

How can you help?

Schools and companies are joining us, viewing the events as a great opportunity for teambuilding, CSR and for developing leadership and empathy (see here for details)

But many people asked us: Can we join in to help, even when we’re not with a group and we don’t have so much money?

The answer is yes, and the wonderful crowdfunding site Give.asia made it possible for everyone to join. You can chip in any amount you’re comfortable with and then meet the family, via Zoom, whenever we have collected enough money to make a new W.A.S.H system! These public Zoom sessions are published in the table below and you can pick whichever session suits you.

Visit the Give.asia site here to put in whatever money you can miss, and to read more about how it all works and what you can do!