February 14, 2024

Written by Jim Cantelon on February 14, 2024. Posted in Blog.

We recently received a report from our WOW partner in Zambia,ICO (Impact Community Outreach). They have been engaged in a cholera mitigation project in the Kabwe region in response to the spread of this extremely virulent disease. Thousands of Zambians have been infected with hundreds of deaths.

Poverty, dirty water, and poor sanitation all contribute to Cholera’s spread. These factors are rife in the villages where ICO works. So they made an urgent appeal to WOW for emergency funding in order to purchase soap, chlorine, and disinfectants. We responded and ICO set out to train their volunteers in hand washing and disinfecting methods who then went into the villages to teach our orphans and widows how to combat this wasting affliction.

You would think that basic sanitation is a given, but it’s not. These impoverished dear ones have no money to buy soap, and rarely have access to clean water. So the rules of sanitation which we here in the West take for granted are like a foreign language to rural Zambians. The idea, for instance , of adding chlorine to their water is beyond their grasp.

Nevertheless our champion volunteers went to work and in the past few weeks the spread of this nasty disease has lessened. Amazing that just soap and clean water can make such a difference no? It’s a matter of life and death.

This is a powerful reminder to us that what we take for granted should be reason for gratitude. Grateful for soap? for clean water? Yes. Grateful.

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