Flood Relief Update-Brasat Char Village

The rain eventually stopped falling and Siem Reap Province started to dry out but this wasn't enough to make everything 'business as usual'. The road out to Brasat Char was still only passable on foot or on motorbike- neither of which are great choices for transporting over 300 ceramic water filters.

We therefore made the decision to get involved in road repairs. Working with the village chief we assembled a team of 40 adults, plus one team leader, to help get the road into a condition where a truck could pass along.

Each team member was paid with 7.5kg of rice ( funded by your wonderful donations)for their labouring. This food for work activity had three main benefits-

(1) it provided some income to families who had lost their normal rice harvesting work due to the damage done to the crops,
(2) it means JWOC can now access the village of Brasat Char to continue its Clean Water work and
(3) the road is now safer and easier for all who need to move between the villages for work, school or family.

Below you can see some pictures for the work in action-

Some of the team

Receiving the rice after the day's work.

Working hard under the cloudless sky.

The big gap that the team could only just negotiate on motorbike last week is now gone.

All this work meant that today we were able to get a truck into the village to distribute the first of the water filters.

Due to the increased areas of stagnant water in the village, left by the flooding, the number of mosquitoes has also increased but we knew from our baseline survey of Brasat Char that only 50% of families had enough mosquito nets for all family members to sleep under one. So now as part of our relief and recovery work we are distributing mosquito nets at the same time as the filters to ensure each household has at least one fully intact mosquito net to provide protection against bites and mosquito borne diseases.

Volunteer Phen hands out filters and nets after the villagers' training session.

Villagers pose with their filters and nets- both important items in improving the health of their families.

Thank you everyone who donated to the relief and recovery fund, we couldn't do this without you!