Bringing Safe Water to Capity, Haiti
Gladys Alexis is a farmer in Capity, a “last-mile” community tucked into the mountains of Haiti’s Artibonite region. Such communities are rural, often isolated, and extremely hard to reach due to a lack of paved roads and limited infrastructure.
Until this year, residents like Gladys had little access to clean, safe water. Capity is surrounded by streams, but they are contaminated with bacteria that cause illness. Although treated water is available for delivery from nearby cities, few people in Capity could afford that service.
“Everyone in the family used to go and collect water,” Gladys told us. After carrying enough water for themselves and their animals, not much was left for washing and other needs. “In the past, we all used to get sick often.”
Thanks to the generosity of partners like you, this hard-to-reach community now has access to safe water through its own Living Water Treatment System.
“Now, we… walk outside and get fresh, clean water,” Gladys said. “Since we’re drinking treated water, we don’t have the sickness that we used to get. Even the animals are healthier!”
For easily overlooked communities like Capity, safe water is a tangible reminder of God’s love and provision. “I used to go to church dirty, without washing,” Gladys said. “But now, since we have this clean water in Capity, I can praise God with a clean body and a clean spirit. My faith in God gives me great hope because I believe that, with God, we can have what we need.”
Safe Water for Refugees
Water Mission is committed to providing vulnerable communities with safe water. In Uganda, we served more than 460,000 refugees in 2020—a 40% increase from 2019. In addition to working in refugee settlements, we also installed a temporary water source, latrines, and handwashing stations at the Ugandan border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This allowed us to serve an estimated 3,500 Congolese refugees quarantined near the border due to COVID-19 before being granted asylum in Uganda.