Panama Mission Trips

News from the Panama Mission

Reports/Journals from Mission Trips

Operation Safe Drinking Water

Sickness rate at an indigenous school falls from 75% of the student body to 10% after a safe drinking water tank is installed.

A school principal’s urgent canoe trip. We looked out to sea from our island base and saw a small canoe coming in. To our surprise it was Senorita Quiroz, the principal of the school at Bahia Grande.
She explained that an urgent problem brought her. Seventy-five percent of her students were
sick and out of school enough to damage their grades. Some of her most promising and brightest students were falling behind due to chronic sickness. She asked for a safe drinking water tank for her kids. Her appeal and her journey by canoe-touched our hearts. We said yes. Because the need was critical we promised a tank within a week. We promised a quick response ----and we delivered!

A promise kept: within the week we installed a new rain catchment tank for the school of 72 Indigenous students.

Months later we went back to the school to ask Senorita Quiroz about the difference
the tank made. She sent us a note the next day after checking her records. She said:
“Before we had the water tank, around 75% of the children had some kind of disease like diarrhea, vomit, parasites and other kinds of stomach problems that kept them out of School. Since you gave us the water tank the number of children absent due to sickness has fallen to around 10%.”

Many indigenous schools are in urgent need of safe drinking water.

Far too many promising young students are missing school due to sickness. The water tank for Senorita Quiroz cost only $900, but has cut absenteeism due to sickness from 75% to almost nothing. It has spared children from chronic sickness and got them back into school.

Recent rains have refilled Senorita Quiroz’s tank with safe, disease-free water. Frequent rains in the area will keep it full for years to come.

But water-borne diseases knock far too many children out of school. We need 17 new tanks within the next thirty days. You can make a difference in the lives of indigenous children.

Pablito, on the left, a bright young student, doesn’t miss classes from sickness as he did before.