Clean Water-Sanitation Initiative for Rural Haiti

Bonswa GlobalGiving Family,

Happy New Year!  We hope you had a wonderful holiday season with your loved ones and started 2020 (and a new decade!) off on a strong note.  The last time you heard from us, we shared that for the first time in nine years we were unable to go to Haïti for our Partner Community Visits (PVC) due to the political, social and economic environment in the country throughout 2019.  However, that did not deter us from continuing to plan with our Project Managers and Partner Communities to ensure that the work could continue in 2020. Also, we are happy to report that YOUR unwavering support in 2019 has helped us to almost reach our funding goal, which has helped secure our Partner Community’s ability to construct the next 15 latrines in the Spring/Summer of 2020!  Thank you so much to our monthly supporters and our new supporters for helping us to get closer to reaching our goal. Your efforts have not only helped 85 families in the community construct their own latrines that are all still in operation today, but also has ensured no new cases of Cholera in the community. For those who may not know, Cholera is an infectious and often fatal bacterial disease of the small intestine, typically contracted from poor sanitation and infected water sources, causing severe vomiting, diarrhea and dehydration. Cholera affects both adults and children and can kill within hours if left untreated. Since the launching of the latrine initiative with our Partner Community to improve the water and sanitation in their community, this threat has greatly decreased and the quality of life for the community's children has greatly increased. When we first started working with our Partner Community, Cholera was the biggest health risk to the community.  Health and sanitation, by way of latrines, was an essential need to be addressed. Now that Cholera is no longer a major health threat to the community, they have begun to focus on their next endeavour, proper education for the children in the community via establishing a trade school in the same area where we held community meetings with them during our last PCV. Again, thank you for your continued support of our Partner Community and their work towards creating their own self-sufficiency. We are so excited to delve into this new prospect with them and look forward to sharing more concrete details in our upcoming reports with you. Until then… be well and may 2020 yield abundance, growth and results for you and your loved ones.