Much of Asia’s Water Has an Extreme Level of Contamination
As one of the most densely populated countries in the world, the water crisis in Asia affects hundreds of millions of people. One of the primary reasons behind the contamination is a lack of sanitation facilities. The situation is improving, but it’s still a crisis.
Although World Bank statistics show that the practice of open defecation has steadily declined in the 21st Century, there are still places where half the population still has no sanitary toilets. With open defecation, surface and ground water sources take on harmful pathogens and parasites that cause illnesses and even death. Water.org says 500 of Asia’s children die every day from diarrhea that comes from contaminated water.
The problem isn’t just a lack of understanding about contamination, it’s more a lack of access to basic human needs. Water is essential for survival, and clean water is scarce. Thankfully, some Asian nations, such as India, have an educational campaign to curb open defecation and encourage people to use toilets. But when no facilities exist, there’s no other choice.
Young girls in Asia are expected to fetch clean drinking water for their families, often at the expense of being in school
Fetching Drinking Water is Considered Part of Domestic Life in Asia
Water for drinking, cooking and bathing must come from somewhere. In the Western world, it comes from a tap. In rural Asia, carrying water is an integral part of domesticity. It’s also a full-time job. Child labor in Asia is unlawful in most situations, but laboring for the family’s survival is different. When the family is in need of clean drinking water, education can and often does go by the wayside.
A clean source, such as a well that’s deep enough to go beneath ground water contamination, is often miles away. Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in a day. The trip to and from a source can consume the better part of it.
Carrying Water is Difficult, Demanding Work
Under ideal circumstances, it takes an average adult about 30 minutes to walk a mile at a normal pace. Asia’s girls don’t labor under ideal circumstances.
The paths they take aren’t usually paved. Their footwear isn’t a pair of cross trainers. The containers they carry to their destination are significantly heavier on the return trip. One gallon of water weighs nearly 4 kilograms (or more than 8 pounds).
Time that might be spent on a girl’s studies is used, instead, for physical labor that helps sustain life. It’s no wonder so many of Asia’s precious girls quit school before they graduate. When clean water isn’t a given, fetching it becomes part of their everyday life.
In many parts of the world, children get up on a weekday morning, have breakfast and head out to another day at school. There’s ample water at home for brushing their teeth, for making oatmeal and to carry in a bottle with their backpack.
GFA’s clean water initiatives strive to change that reality. A BioSand water filter gives a family a way to filter dirty water into clean water at home. One Jesus Well can provide an entire village with abundant clean water for as many as 300 families per day, for decades.
With clean, healthy and safe water available near the home, children can be children. Girls can focus on their studies as much as their male peers.
Something as simple as water can have the very literal effects of saving lives and giving children, especially girls, the hope of a better future.
For more on the global clean water crisis, go here.
So let us take a deep breath. Let us think a moment about that peaceful and stunning NASA photo: AS17-148-22727.
Let us remind ourselves that of all the spinning planets in our solar system, it alone has been created uniquely to sustain water, and that not one other drop has been discovered anywhere else in interstellar space. Let us remember that 75 percent of our planet is covered with water, some 96.5 percent of that in its oceans. Then let us say a prayer for its water resource preservation and purification, and let us remember that some religious systems view water to be holy. Only then, let us absorb the fact that an investigative report by Reuters released December 19, 2016, found nearly 3,000 areas in the United States with lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint.
This headline tagged a report released by the Associated General Contractors (AGC): “Both Public and Private Studies Find Astounding Gaps Between Current Spending and Projected Needs.” The analysis determined: “Modernizing and replacing aging water infrastructure may be the single largest public works endeavor in our nation’s history. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Water and Drinking Water Infrastructure Gap analysis found a $540 billion gap between current spending and projected needs for water and wastewater infrastructure (combined) over 20 years. Other public studies conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and a private study produced by AGC partner, the Water Infrastructure Network, have similarly estimated the nation’s water infrastructure needs to range between $400 and $600 billion over a 20-year period.
The 2014–2017 Flint, Michigan lead-poisoned water crisis highlights possible impacts on communities if warnings are ignored and if appropriate budget planning is not prioritized. (“What is happening to us in Cape Town may not be an outlier. It could happen to you too.”) We need to understand that water degradation and evaporation and infrastructure decline is happening to us now.
In Gayo Village, Ethiopia, a group of women and young girls collect water from a rain water pool. They use tablets to purify the water before they drink it. Around the world, mostly women and children bear the burden of collecting water for their families.
So what is the status of clean water worldwide? According to the World Health Organization, some of the global facts regarding safe water usage are these:
of the global population in 2015 (6.5 billion people) used at least a basic service. A basic service is an improved drinking-water source within a round trip of 30 minutes to collect water.
840 million
people lack even a basic drinking-water service, including 159 million people who are dependent on surface water (water from rivers and ponds).
2 billion
people globally use a drinking water source contaminated with feces.
502,000
deaths every year are caused by diseases transmitted by contaminated water such as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio.
38%
of health care facilities lack an improved water source in low- and middle-income countries. 19 percent do not have improved sanitation, and 35 percent lack water and soap for hand-washing.
In addition to these above statistics, WHO also notes that “Yet diarrhea is largely preventable, and the deaths of 361,000 children aged under five years could be avoided each year if these risk factors were addressed. Where water is not readily available, people may decide handwashing is not a priority, thereby adding to the likelihood of diarrhea and other diseases.”
Is Anyone Doing Anything?
Certainly, organizations somehow, somewhere, are doing something about this? Right? This is the natural response of those of us who unthinkingly use clean water to flush our toilets and allow grey water to be piped into the sewer systems of our communities.
Actually, that thought many of us have when we read about water-distressed systems worldwide is right. Well-meaning help of all kinds, from missionary groups to hundreds if not thousands of non-government organizations to the World Bank and the United Nations to the World Health Organization to inter-agency coordinated efforts to private foundations with substantial granting means to individual governments to the largess of western countries—all of them are players in attempting to solve the water problems of the world.
Many wells drilled by well-meaning organizations now lie broken or in disrepair.
Disrepair occurs because NGOs often do not fully consult with local people before beginning a water project to determine what it will cost to clean and maintain the well.
Some naysayers have deemed this come-do-your-thing-and-go approach as “non-government organizational malfeasance.” Skinner gives the example of a badly constructed and poorly maintained shallow well, dug by a charity in Katine sub county in north-east Uganda, that was full of soil and animal feces and was making the local population sick. The African Medical and Research Foundation’s strategy to solve this well deficiency was to set up a local committee responsible to operate and maintain a new borehole with trained hand-pump repairmen available in case of breakdown. “There is no point in an external agency coming in, putting in a drill-hole and then passing it over to the local community if they can’t afford to maintain it over the next 10 or 20 years,” concludes Skinner.
A river in India is often used for bathing, washing and drinking.
“This book chronicles my travels in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh, countries that are knit together by the Ganga and her various tributaries. I explain what I learned about glaciers melting in the mountains, sewage gluts and water shortages in the vast cities, and plans for engineering rivers that will have unknown consequences and perhaps limited benefits,” she writes in her introduction.
Interviewing hundreds of Asian water conservation experts who are concerned about their countries’ water shortages and misuse, we have a chance to listen over her shoulder to their love for their land and their attempts to solve water distress issues. Clean water, indeed, is the goal, but working through past mistakes, the consequences of climate change and its unknown future, population explosions, and unintended engineering mishaps gives the reader an extraordinary feeling of being party to all the discussions. As the flap copy explains, “Many are reviving ingenious methods of water management that thrived for centuries in South Asia and may point the way to water sustainability and healthy rivers.”
Simple is often best. Ancient civilizations solved their water needs in ways that speak to us today.
Here too, as with Jamie Skinner’s reporting on Africa’s abandoned wells, a theme emerges, one the author confesses she discovered during her essentially seven-year journey. “There is no way that I—a former medieval scholar turned environment reporter rather later in life—can claim to have answers to South Asia’s water crisis, if there are right answers. So I give you many highly intelligent, trained, sane, and committed water experts from that region. These authorities more often argue for the lighter hand, the softer path; not no engineering at all, but less invasive engineering, and techniques that are localized, decentralized, and draw on traditional methods along with the almost-lost wisdom of local people.”
A child of the Himba tribe carries a bucket of water in Kamanjab, Kunene, Namibia.
Sewage in the rivers: “Estimates of the amount of untreated raw sewage that enters the Ganga every day are hard to grasp: apparently something in the neighborhood of a billion liters. Much of it comes from homes that do have toilets, where relatively clean water is being flushed away and turned into sewage, which then turns rivers into sewers, a further loss of clean water.”
Climate change: “This lack of snowfall is the chief problem Dobhal (a glacier specialist) has seen in the high mountains in recent years. As a consequence, the glaciers are depleting, not developing. With good winter snowfall, they stay in balance, and the melting rate is not cause for alarm. Melting glacier ice accounts for 30 percent of the water in the rivers. The rest is from snow and from the monsoon. Now that there is less snow, the spring flow in the rivers comes directly from the older ice. When glaciers lose their volume, the rate of melting increases. It’s the difference between a melting block of ice and a melting ice cube. Big glaciers create their own climate. They make cold weather. Big glaciers can be more powerful than the sunlight that reaches them. But as glaciers shrink, the power of the sun to melt them grows.” Unpredictable behavior is ahead from flooding due to increased glacier melt to drought to drying rivers. One expert sums up the uncertainty, saying, “Climate change will manifest itself through water. It will affect every sector of life through precipitation, snow, rain, whatever. Livestock, forestry, soil, sanitation, disease, everything. But we have no idea how it’s going to happen.”
An uncanny sight in a first-world country: Lines of people waiting to collect natural spring water during the drought in Cape Town, South Africa.
Agricultural water scarcity: The global water scarcity problem is not limited to providing potable drinking water for humans, although without it we would not exist. Water is necessary for agriculture, for both crops and animal husbandry.
In water-starved South Africa, the first restrictions on water usage were levied upon the agricultural sector. Now, farmers are renegotiating their leases because they cannot produce enough income. Current economic forecasts anticipate that within the next five years as many as 98 percent of farms will have a negative Net Farm Income.
These countries and others are in a catch-22. Water for agriculture is limited, but it is needed to grow the crops and animals required to feed the demands of growing populations.
The rapid economic expansion in China has placed so much demand on water supplies that 28,000 rivers have disappeared over the past 25 years.
On the national level, Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi began promoting the implementation of a decades-old clean water initiative in 2014. One part of that project alone, linking the Ken and Betwa rivers, would make drinking water available for 1.35 million people plus provide enough to irrigate 600,000 hectares of farmable land. The project is pending approval from the environmental ministry, but nonetheless, we’re hopeful of the efforts making strides to resolve India’s water crisis.
In 2016, 330 million Indians were affected by drought, and the government is taking action to respond. “We are working on a big scheme to bring water to farmlands. We need to have a permanent solution to the drought,” the Prime Minister said.
There is a plan underway for 25,000 villages to get clean water wells, and 5,000 wells have been started, as of April 2017.
Dr. KP Yohannan, founder of Gospel for Asia and Metropolitan of Believers Eastern Church, met with high officials in the government in March 2016 to discuss ways in which India’s Christian community could collaborate with the government for the good of the nation. Believers Eastern Church has since been able to work together with the Indian government to work on cleaning up some of the nation’s rivers.
One of those voices Colopy interviewed—a highly intelligent, trained and committed expert—Sudhil Chaudhary, a professor of biology at Bhagalpur University has a plan. His is for forestry restoration, which also involves water reclamation. Sudhil would like local communities to be part of each and every decision about the plan. This is a theme that seems to be emerging all over the world. I find it stated more and more as I research world development needs and particularly, the Millennium Development Goals and its companion the Sustainable Development Goals. Things work when there is community buy-in, and often fail when there is none.
“But the system I have known and used, quite unconsciously ever since I was potty trained, is nuts. In a world where the supply of clean drinking water is becoming an almost universal worry, why would anyone put clean water into a toilet? For South Asia, flushed toilets and the treatment systems they require have become untenable long before they have become universal. For the Western world, the system as it is currently practiced will surely become untenable before too many more years have passed.”
Admittedly, the concept of “from toilet to tap,” as the phrase goes, has met with determined resistance, but due to a three-year water shortage crisis and to determined public education, negative reaction seems to be lessening. A public campaign has carefully explained the three steps of the water reclamation project.
“The first is a micro-filtration of the treated waste water to remove solids, oils and bacteria, before the resulting liquid goes through reverse osmosis.” Phase Two means everything is pushed “through a fine plastic membrane that filters out viruses and pharmaceuticals.” Phase Three: “The water is then treated with UV light to remove any remaining organic compounds, before joining the main groundwater supply, which must pass strict quality controls to meet legal standards and distribution to households.” Mike Marcus, the general manager of the Orange County Water District (OCWD) explains that once wastewater goes through this three-step process, “we basically have distilled water.”
Water Reclamation Process
Phase 1
Micro-filtration removes solids, oils and bacteria, all before the water goes through reverse osmosis.
Phase 2
Everything is pushed through a fine plastic membrane that filters our viruses and pharmaceuticals.
Phase 3
The water is treated with UV light to remove any other organic compounds.
The OCWD assures the end-user that the re-treated water exceeds all state and federal drinking standards. As the technology is adapted to other places in the world, water-insecure Singapore, for instance, in addition to new state-side additions launched in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, the president of the World Water Council, Benedito Braga, reports, “The quality [of effluent water from a sewage treatment plant] is very good, as good or better than the tap water in any city in the developed world.” Thomas Quinn, the head of the Association of California Water Agencies insists this process is a central strategy to drought-proofing modern urban economies.
For those who shudder at the possibility of drinking recycled toilet water, sometimes it is all a matter of what’s in a name. An interview over National Public Radio acknowledged the “yuck” factor many in the public might naturally feel at the thought of recycling water from the toilet to the tap, and that resistance might be helped by a newer nomenclature such as the “the potable reuse project.” The Orange County Water District is being far more upfront in their public campaign by using the hashtag #GetOverIt. NPR Reporter, Nathan Rott, insists that recycled water is and will remain California’s single largest source of new water supplies as the state moves forward into the 21st century.
“The quality [of effluent water from a sewage treatment plant] is very good, as good or better than the tap water in any city in the developed world.”
Then before we turn to the water dilemmas of the two-thirds world and point a finger and tsk-tsk over spoiled rivers and sewage-polluted streams, perhaps we should look hard at the infrastructure inadequacies of our own nation. The news cycles in the States and the headline-oriented emphasis of major networks and cable outreaches leaves little time for in-depth reporting. We have heard, for many years, much discussion regarding the national need for infrastructure renovation—Roads are in disrepair, bridges are crumbling, airports all need upgrading. Rarely—rarely—do we hear that our water infrastructure systems are also in red flag conditions.
Flint, Michigan
The sad result of what is essentially a violation of public trust can be encapsulated by the Flint, Michigan, water saga that happened in April 2014. The drinking source for this city was diverted from the treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River. This change was influenced by the fact that an estimated $5,000,000 in savings was projected over the next two years. In August and September of 2014, city officials detected levels of coliform bacteria, and a bulletin was issued for Flint citizens to boil their water. In October 2014, General Motors complained about the corrosivity of the water, explaining that car parts were actually corroding. The request was made that GM be able to switch back to the Detroit water source. (It turns out, that corrosive capability of the Flint River water would be determined to also corrode upon lead pipes, leaching lead levels into the water supply of individual homes. An early investigation by one “whistle-blowing” worker determined that, despite standard practice, officials failed to apply corrosion inhibitors to the Flint River water.) In January 2015, in a public meeting, citizens complained about bad water—murky tap water; there was a bad smell and taste as well as the questionable appearance. These complaints appeared to have gone on over an 18-month period before a local physician, taking it upon himself, found highly elevated blood lead levels in the children of Flint.
Eventually, with city officials dodging complaints, issuing false reports to state regulators indicating that “tests at Flint’s water treatment plant had detected no lead and testing in homes had registered lead at acceptable levels,” and with Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality eventually being pegged as the major player in denying the problem and refusing to take action, major players, too numerous to mention, finally stepped in. Scientists and physicians and medical schools and environmental organizations, both private and governmental, determined that the proportion of infants and children with elevated levels of lead in their blood had nearly doubled since the switch to the Flint River.
In September 2015, Dr. Marc Edwards, notified by a Flint resident whose alarms had been ignored by city officials, began testing Flint water with a team from Virginia Tech to perform lead level testing. Working with a grant from the National Science Foundation, he and his student team reported that at least a quarter of Flint households had levels of lead above the federal allotted level of 15 parts per billion (ppb) and that in some homes, lead levels were at 13,200 ppb. Edwards summarized the Flint Water Crisis by stating: “It was the injustice of it all and that the very agencies that are paid to protect these residents from lead in water, knew or should have known after June at the very latest of this year, that federal law was not being followed in Flint, and that these children and residents were not being protected. And the extent to which they went to cover this up exposes a new level of arrogance and uncaring that I have never encountered.”
The National Guard delivers bottled water to residents of Flint, MI.
This all, of course, has resulted in countless hearings, investigations, and continued studies on the local, statewide and national levels. Emergency centers for distributing water and home filters, then replacement cartridges, have been established. Testing water and lead levels in the blood of children continue. The water supply was diverted back to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. Numerous Class action suits have been filed against Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and 13 other state officials, including former Flint mayor Dayne Walling. The complaints allege that the officials acted recklessly and negligently, leading to serious injuries from lead poisoning.
Needless to say, major funding has been found and pledged for comprehensive water infrastructure improvement, all to be carried out over the next few years. But what is immeasurable is the damage done to the brains of small children, most of which cannot now be determined but which bodes ill for the future of these kids. Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters along with Representative Dan Kildee called upon the state of Michigan to “make a sustained financial commitment by establishing a Future Fund to meet the cognitive, behavioral and health challenges of children affected by lead poisoning.” All fear that those challenges will be real and life-lasting.
Children attending any GFA Bridge of Hope program learn to read and write, gain positive study habits, are provided with a healthy meal, receive medical care as needed, are shown God’s loving-kindness, and develop the HOPE that their education will one day help them shake off the weight of poverty.
While, in his eyes, his statement seemed to be true, the irony is that it was not entirely so. The mere fact that he said it indicated that he cared. In fact, he admitted, “I have a great burden for this village.” The reason he cared is that he knew that Jesus cares.
The village of which he spoke is home to 2,000 impoverished families whose daily need is survival. Their entire life is consumed with laboring to feed themselves and their families. Their fight for survival means their children are forced to work in laborious and tedious tasks to generate adequate resources.
Many of these families live in one-room huts, often made with only sticks and plastic. They have no nearby sources of clean water. They lack proper sanitation facilities. What food they are able to acquire does not always provide adequate nutrition. And there doesn’t seem to be a way out.
A recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute found that there is a substantial difference in poverty levels beyond what we comprehend. There is a poverty level at which people can “achieve a decent standard of living,” but these villagers and their children live below that level in the realm of “bare subsistence” where hope and a way out appear non-existent.
Food, clothing and medical care are honorable and necessary charitable acts that demonstrate the love of Christ. They are gifts and services that sustain life. However, they do not, in and of themselves, create a bridge to a better life.
Food can make a destitute person less hungry, but they are still impoverished. Clothing can help provide a sense of dignity, but it does not change a person’s circumstances. Medical care can prevent disease, but it cannot break the bondage of abject poverty.
Creating a Bridge of Hope
This village is an example of how Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported Bridge of Hope (BOH) centers make a difference.
Bridge of Hope centers provide an educational experience for school-age children in which they learn the practical skills that can be the bridge to a better life. Each school day, students practice reading, writing and math in an environment of Christian love where staff members guide them to the hope for a better tomorrow by teaching them life skills that will become their bridge out of the generational curse into which they were born.
Education is a process. It doesn’t happen overnight. Each evening when a child goes home from a Bridge of Hope center, they return to the same existential scenario. But each evening they go with a little more hope for the future.
The centers offer each child with daily, nutritious meals to give them the energy they need to learn and grow. Regular medical checkups are also part of the program. BOH centers even provide the students’ school supplies.
The program helps the children with their education so they can one day get a good job and afford sufficient food, decent clothing, medical supplies and other necessities of life for themselves and for their families. Beyond this, Bridge of Hope provides the children with opportunities to pursue and excel in their God-given skills and interests.
Bridge of Hope staff members become the hands and feet of Christ to the students and their families, serving them with genuine love, compassion and respect. Staff members maintain relationships with the parents and children and offer them counsel, encouragement and, ultimately, give them hope.
What does a child receive at the Bridge of Hope centers?
Education. This includes tuition, books and uniforms. But even more significant is that they will get tutoring in reading and writing, which means a future of hope is guaranteed.
Nutrition. During the school day, each child receives a healthy, balanced meal.
Medical care. The Bridge of Hope leaders who care for children also monitor their health and provide care as needed. Extra attention is given in areas where malaria or tuberculosis is prevalent. In addition to periodic checkups and medical treatment, children also learn basic habits of good hygiene, such as washing hands, trimming fingernails and bathing regularly.
Development of social skills and self-confidence. From the earliest ages in kindergarten, children are given opportunities to play games and practice basic rules of courtesy.
Hope Becomes Real on the Other Side of the Bridge
While the short-term focus is on helping the children now, the long-term perspective is to enable them to become all they possibly can be as a useful servant to their community, and to one day be a blessing to many others throughout Asia.
Bridge of Hope centers are not limited to remote villages. Many are located in the slum areas of major Asian cities, where roaming through and living on top of trash heaps is a way of life and their only hope for tomorrow.
Paul encouraged Timothy to share what he had taught him with others who would then be able to show many more (2 Timothy 2:2). Following that model, the character development and social impact at work in Bridge of Hope centers is being passed on to many others throughout the community.
Bridge of Hope is not just a name for a project. It is a ministry that actually produces a product. That product is the potential for a hopeful future for children who are trapped by circumstances they did not create, in a situation they cannot escape and who would, otherwise, have no hope.
Parents and grandparents recognize the changes in their children and grandchildren, causing them not only rejoice in their hope for the future but also to realize the love of Christ in their own lives.
The father of one of the children at the same center said, “This only can be possible through Christians. The love of Christians is great. My children are going to become well-prepared for their future. I am overwhelmed with their concern for us.”
You know that awkward moment when you’re stopped at a red light, and you can feel the presence right outside your window. You study the road in front of you, trying, unconvincingly, to look casual and nonchalant. Before, when you slowed down for this stop light, you saw the panhandler standing at the corner. You knew you were going to end up idling right next to him. You quickly think to yourself, What do I do? Do you smile and look away? Do you give him money? What are the chances it won’t go straight to the liquor store till? His sign says he has a family. Does he really? Will they see a cent of any money you give him? What about if you give him a gospel tract? Isn’t that really his greatest need: Jesus?
I have often wrestled through these questions and settled on one of the actions above, but never with complete satisfaction that it was the best way to help or exactly what Jesus would have done.
Usually, when Jesus was approached by the needy, disabled or downcast, He met their immediate physical needs, often through healing. But He also fed people, just because they were hungry. In fact, He told us that when we meet the immediate physical needs of people in front of us, we are ministering to Him directly.
“Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me. Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’” —Matthew 25:34–40
Our field partners in Asia see the same kind of desperate needs that we read about in the gospels. People affected by leprosy. People without access or means for medical treatment. Families too poor to send their kids to school or even feed them. There are so many natural disasters in rural Asian countries that don’t have the infrastructure to respond.
Relief packets, distributed by Gospel for Asia-supported Compassion Services workers, being helicoptered into remote locations in Nepal following the catastrophic earthquakes in 2015.
Gospel for Asia-supported Compassion Services teams are there to meet people’s real-time, immediate needs. Things like medical checkups and flood relief. These are vehicles for people to experience the real love and compassion of Jesus. Jesus sees their need. He sees their plight. He is not deaf to their cries, they reach His throne in heaven.
Compassion Services is where heaven touches earth. Washing a leprosy patient’s wounds gives physical representation to the spiritual reality of God’s cleansing forgiveness. Rebuilding the home of a family who lost everything in an earthquake speaks of an eternal home that cannot be destroyed.
When we reach out to the immediate physical needs of those around us in the name of Jesus, He ministers to them through us. We become the very hands and feet of Jesus on earth.
This is Rayna, a 125-year-old woman who received a blanket.
In a tiny farming village in Asia, two Sisters of Compassion met 125-year-old, Rayna, a poor widow who has lived her whole life in this village. The sisters made weekly visits to Rayna to hear her stories culled from 125 years of love and heartache and to pray for her. They noticed the torn and smelly blanket she used for warmth and realized she and her family couldn’t even afford a new blanket, because they used all their income on daily survival. There was no money left for improving their lives. The sisters were able to provide a new, warm blanket for Rayna through a gift distribution.
“During night time, I feel cold because there were no warm clothes in my house, and I struggled a lot,” Rayna said. “I could not afford to buy a blanket to protect me. But thank you very much for giving this blanket.”
Gospel for Asia partners work right in the middle of some of the most difficult plights of human need. Our partners work in 44 leprosy colonies in Asia, where leprosy still has a life-long stigma. As people affected with leprosy are often cast out of society, they gather in groups or “colonies” for safety. Our partners are busy ministering to these outcasts by cleansing their wounds, getting them medical attention, and providing livelihoods, such as goats, through GFA’s Christmas Gift Catalog so they have a sustainable means of living. We even have an onsite cobbler at one of the colonies to provide custom shoes for those with feet too disfigured to wear normal shoes.
Our field partners also work in slums spread across Asia, providing toilets and blankets to those who do not have access to these items of basic human need. We host medical camps in slums, leper colonies and poor rural areas that have no access to any sort of health care. Often in these areas, people’s only resource for medical care are traditional practices that spread more disease than cure.
After the decimating series of earthquakes in Nepal in 2015, coordinated relief efforts came from many Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported partners in Indian states. Supplies of clothing, food and medicine were assembled to meet immediate needs. Building supplies were collected to help with reconstruction. Even school supplies were provided for thousands of children that lost everything. In times of crisis, when warning is impossible, Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported Compassion Services are poised to respond immediately and remain for the long haul.
Jesus made time for the needy around Him. Even when He was busy, on His way somewhere, a desperate woman who reached out to Him was not turned away, but healed (Mark 5:21-34). Men would cry out to Him from the side of the road, and Jesus paused to listen and minister to their physical needs (Matthew 20:29-34). Often this led to spiritual transformation as well.
By touching people’s lives by meeting immediate physical needs, the door is open for deeper healing as well.
Bottled water and a gospel tract for those standing in 100-degree weather.
You remember the panhandler at the intersection? This is my someone-asking-for-help-while-I’m-busy-on-my-way-somewhere moment. How will I respond? Once I had kids and knew that these four little people were watching my life, I determined to come up with a way to reach out to panhandlers. I was done looking the other way and feeling embarrassed, not knowing what to do. So I put together a plastic bin that sits in my van, right between the two front seats filled with bottles of water. Each water bottle has a gospel tract rubber-banded around the outside. Tucked into the gospel tract is $1. My kids and I pray over the gospel tracts and write a warm note of encouragement before we wrap them around the water bottles. Now that we live in Texas, bottled water is perfect. When we lived in Washington State, it was cans of soup.
There are so many ways that Jesus continues to minister to the needs of people around the world. And He does it through the small and big acts we carry out every day. When we, as the Body of Christ, show up in a recently flooded village where all the crudely constructed homes have been washed away, Jesus is there. When we give a bottled water to someone standing on a street corner in 100-degree weather, Jesus is there. We are the literal hands and feet of Jesus reaching out in our local communities and across the globe, meeting people’s immediate physical and spiritual needs. Being the conduit for heaven to touch earth.
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That’s a good question. It may not be in Scripture, as many people believe, but it does have an element of truth. John Wesley is generally cited as the originator of the phrase in his sermon, “Cleanliness Is, Indeed, Next to Godliness.” It is certain that he was not the creator of the concept. Similar statements have been recorded in ancient literature.
While the Bible may not specifically say that cleanliness is next to godliness, it does, however, associate the two. Those stricken with leprosy in Biblical times were required by ritual law to announce that they were unclean should they appear in public.
Jesus described the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees, saying that they were more concerned about outwardly cleanliness than internal cleanliness where they were “full of extortion and self-indulgence” (Matthew 23:25, 26).
Job described himself as “pure, without transgression” (Job 33:9).
The Psalmist similarly used cleanliness to describe his need for a return to righteousness: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).
Both Paul and John used cleanliness to describe holiness and righteousness. Paul urged the Corinthian church to cleanse themselves “from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Corinthians 7:1). John reminds believers that when we confess our sins, the Lord “is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
There seems to be a direct connection between cleanliness and godliness, at least in comparative terms.
If we must be cleansed from unrighteousness, then unrighteousness must be dirty.
If a leper who has been healed is declared clean, he is free of his disease.
Can Cleanliness Lead to Godliness?
That’s another good question – one which the western world does not always handle well.
We like to eat from clean plates and sleep on clean sheets. We avoid hanging out with people who haven’t bathed or washed their clothes.
The western world has come to take cleanliness for granted, and we withdraw from that which is dirty.
But what if we were to live as millions around the world do—in abject poverty, especially in Asian and African countries?
What if our lives consisted of living in unclean conditions from which there was no relief?
And what if a miracle should happen and someone appeared who could change our circumstances?
What would we do? How would we respond to being able to drink clean water and use private, sanitary toilet facilities—things which we didn’t have the privilege of before?
We would be eternally grateful.
That is why the global ministry of Gospel for Asia is so effective.
The many projects GFA undertakes as ministry efforts are to provide clean water, sanitation, and similar relief. One reason is because of the great need. Another reason is because we serve the Great Provider.
Our mission in life is to be devout followers of Christ and to live lives fully pleasing to Him. God has given us a special love for the people of Asia, and it is our desire to minister to them and help them through ministries like education, providing health information or practical gifts, or through the spiritual transformation of peaceful hearts, restored relationships and mended lives. We do all this in community and in partnership with the global Body of Christ.
The impoverished to whom we minister in Asia are so grateful for the kindness and cleanliness that Gospel for Asia (GFA) offers for their physical needs, they often welcome our ministry to their spiritual needs. They respond to kindness and love expressed by the offer of cleanliness.
Cleanliness may or may not be next to godliness, but at Gospel for Asia (GFA) we know that cleanliness can lead those who think they have no hope to the sure and certain hope we have in Jesus Christ.
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“So what does Christianity have to do with the defecation problems of the world?”
That’s a question posed in Gospel for Asia (GFA) special report “Saving Lives at Risk from Open Defecation: Using Outdoor Toilets to Improve Sanitation.”
The report, written by bestselling author and speaker Karen Burton Mains, takes an in-depth—and, at times, personal—view concerning open defecation problems around the world and those specific to Asia.
In this part of the slums in Asia, many people live in close proximity to unhygienic surroundings—lacking facilities like toilets and proper drainage.
Here’s an excerpt:
Talking Openly About Open Defecation
Another key dilemma in this discussion—open defecation, hardly a dinner-table topic or a mission committee agenda item—is the fact that accessibility to toilets does not always indicate usage. Changing habits is mostly a matter of changing mindsets in the face of the stranglehold of deeply entrenched beliefs.
Elizabeth Royte, in a comprehensive August 2017 National Geographic Magazine article, reports visiting Parameswaran Iyer, India’s secretary of drinking water and sanitation, in 2016. A hand-numbered sign on his wall tracks progress.
“You see that?” he asks. “One hundred thousand is the number of villages that are ODF today.” (ODF is the acronym for open defecation free).
Royte reports working the internal math: “Just 540,000 to go, I note; three years before Modi’s deadline.”
Other players, including the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (with $40 million dollars in prize money allocated toward innovative approaches to new toilet technologies), hundreds of concerned social entrepreneurs, engineers with altruistic motivations, East Asian water initiatives, and countless faith-based organizations are tackling the seemingly intractable worldwide dilemma of toilets, sanitation systems and sullied water.
What drives all this magnitude of interest, field research, consortiums and consultations on sanitation/water projects, awarding of grants and money prizes? Disease—plain and simple. Both waterborne and airborne. Some 1.5 million people die globally each year from polluted water diseases alone.
Facing the Facts about Toilets
Elizabeth Royte, who is a sanitation expert traveling widely and reporting extensively, summarizes that “Indian PM Modi aims to build more than 100 million new toilets in rural areas alone by 2019.” But she notes that “deep-seated attitudes may present an even bigger barrier to improving sanitation than a lack of pipes and pits.”
That being said, let’s first look at the data regarding the state of toilets and open defecation in Asia. Then let’s examine what development organizations, sanitation technologies and mission groups, namely Gospel for Asia (GFA), are attempting in order to help Asia become ODF.
Starting with a global overview, key facts regarding sanitation highlighted by the World Health Organization are:
Mains, who has traveled extensively, visiting at least 55 countries, also gives some personal and quite humorous examples of experiencing some of the world’s sanitation problems.
In the refugee camps of the world, my travel companions and I held ridiculous discussions as to who had invented squat toilets—men or women? Someone shot a photo of me holding a rickety latrine toilet door upright while a woman co-worker trusted me to guard her privacy while she did her business inside. I am laughing, howling with laughter really, at a ridiculous situation, but this is, for most of the world, not a laughing matter.
Extrapolate. What if there was no female friend to hold your door? What if the floor around your squat toilet inside was filthy and you had to pull up your sari and rest the top half of the door against your forehead to keep it from falling? What if you believed that the little structures, dark and dank and scary inside, were really inhabited by demons?
Smelling an overflowing latrine from 20 feet away might persuade even a Westerner to think similarly, even if only metaphorically. In truth, I don’t like the few outhouses I’ve been forced to use in the States, nor many of the spooky national park public facilities, and I certainly avoid, if I can help it, those portable potties hauled in on trucks for public events or construction work sites.
A well-cleaned squat toilet in Asia.
Now, while Modi has emphasized improved sanitation, it’s worthwhile to note that India has been struggling with these issues even before winning independence from Great Britain in 1947. In fact, Gandhi insisted, “Sanitation is more important than temples.” Now, however, due to population growth, a conundrum exists: While the percentage that practice open defecation has dropped substantively, birth rates are creating an environment where more people live in geographic locations where fecal exposure is increasing, not decreasing.
Today, some 157 million urban dwellers—that would be 37 percent of the urban population—lack a safe and private toilet.
Some 315,000 children under the age of 5 die each year from diarrhea. Underweight impoverished mothers give birth to underweight babies. Worldwide, stunting affects an estimated 165 million children under the age of 5.
And all of the above and much, much more could be cured and eliminated by the installation and use of proper sanitation systems in slums, hamlets, rural villages and large cities across India and Asia.
Eventually, I brought the accumulated exposure of my world travels—some 55 countries in all—and the learning I had gathered through journalism research and the actualities of dragging through camps and slums to the board table of Medical Ambassadors International (MAI), a global faith-based health organization.
The former international field director of MAI, now working to create a coalition of some 250 mission groups and development organizations implementing the MAI teaching methodology, made a statement I thought about for years.
“I never realized,” he said, “that I would eventually measure the impact of the Gospel by how many toilets had been built in a village.”
Want to read more of what Mains discovered about saving lives at risk of open defecation? Gospel for Asia (GFA) website has the complete article. After reading it, let us know what you think or if you’ve ever been in a situation where you had to…defecate in the open.
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World Toilet Day, established for November 19th by the UN in 2013, coincides with the 2001 creation of the World Toilet Organization, an organization aimed at raising awareness about and addressing the need for toilets all around the world.
On Oct. 2, 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Swachh Bharat (Clean India), an initiative to clean India in multiple ways, including the goal of eliminating open defecation in the nation by Oct. 2, 2019—the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday.
We are proud to be a small part of impacting families, transforming communities and enabling education (more on that later) through toilets.
Gospel for Asia’s field partners regularly inaugurate new toilets, like they did for Mae and her family. Here’s her story.
The Testimony of a Toilet
Like many others in their village, Reuel, Mae and their family had no toilet facility and had to use the open field early in the morning. They especially struggled during the rain. Mae often felt unsafe and uneasy having to go out in the open, visible to any prying eye, but she had no other choice. Although Reuel and Mae made plans to construct a toilet of their own, they couldn’t come up with the funds to start the project.
Mae and her family [pictured] were overjoyed when their church constructed a toilet for them. Now they have a private and safe place to use the restroom. But they weren’t alone. Gospel for Asia (GFA)-supported pastor Vikranta was Mae’s pastor. He had the joy of nurturing and watching the family grow in the Lord and learn to love Him more. As he cared for their spiritual needs, Pastor Vikranta also saw this family struggle in poverty. Pastor Vikranta aimed to change this, and he requested a toilet to be built for them outside their home. During construction, excitement unfolded among the villagers, and many asked Pastor Vikranta to build them a toilet, too. As the walls of the toilet went up, their desire increased to hear more about Jesus and His love. Encouraging those who lived nearby to use the helpful gift whenever it was needed, Mae told her neighbors, “Our church has built the sanitation [toilet] for us.”After the long-awaited toilet was completed, Reuel and his family were overjoyed and deeply grateful. God fulfilled their hope and need of safe sanitation through the prayer and resources of the Gospel for Asia (GFA) community and its partners worldwide. Not only does this family have a safe place to use the restroom, but the toilet stands as a testimony of God’s faithfulness to those in their sphere of influence. It is setting a pathway for many to find the true hope of Jesus and His cleansing love.
2.4 billion Still Have No Toilet
Did you know that to this day, some 2.4 billion people worldwide—about one-third of the planet—still don’t have access to adequate sanitation facilities? Bringing that number to zero by 2030 is one of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
But seriously—2.4 billion people?
When I was a kid, I enjoyed our rustic camping trips. There were places we went where we had to use a trowel because there were no toilets for miles. That was an interesting novelty, part of the experience.
This is the only sanitation facility (or restroom) in this village.
But I never had to worry about men coming and attacking me. I wasn’t concerned about finding someone else’s mess. My biggest concern was usually avoiding bug bites in awkward places and making sure I kept my clothes clean in the process.
I could handle it for a few days, but I was always thankful to have a porcelain seat once we got back home. I can’t imagine having to go outside every single day. Rain or shine, snow or wind, mosquito swarms and prickly grass.
A toilet is a lot more than dignity. It means safety from diseases, from attacks, from bugs and harsh weather. But toilets also impact education in ways not many people may realize.
Toilets and Education
Did you know that toilets directly impact education, especially for girls?
Think about it.
People all over the world have picked up a practice that may be detrimental for their health: holding it.
Without convenient access to a bathroom, countless women deliberately drink insufficient water just so they won’t have to urinate later in some public place. There is this powerful video produced by WaterAid about a woman living in a slum who, among other things, has trained her body to only go once per day so she won’t have to do it more often.
Gospel for Asia-supported workers are providing toilets for many communities all across Asia.
Our bodies are meant to go several times a day! When we don’t drink enough water, we become dehydrated, which means headaches, difficulty concentrating, and decreased performance in school.
Dehydrated children cannot focus as well. They struggle. They fall behind. They should be drinking, but many don’t want to because of inadequate toilets.
And then girls hit puberty.
Every month comes a few days when young women need easy access to a safe place. But if they don’t get it, many stay home until the way of women has passed. That means teenage girls might start missing out on a quarter of their schooling. It’s no wonder so many in toilet-deprived areas fall behind and eventually drop out.
Now, amazingly, global drop-out rates between boys and girls are leveling out on the whole, but they still remain skewed in regions without proper sanitation. This is tragic when you consider the tremendous global push for education and empowering women. Awareness of the need for toilets in this equation has been increasing through the years, and we praise God for that. In fact, it seems that will be one of the topics at this year’s World Toilet Summit.
Toilets provide dignity, safety, health, enable education and empower communities.
I remember the excited buzz around the office when GFA’s Christmas Gift Catalog first featured toilets, and we have been proud to feature them every year since. We’re grateful to be part of bringing sanitary joy to tens of thousands of people in Asia.
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Do you know what is the single most effective method in cutting down the contraction and spreading of diseases? You do this every day. Hopefully more than once a day. It’s the simple, life-saving method of washing your hands!
And you know what’s right around the corner? Global Handwashing Day . Oct. 15 is the day to raise awareness of how tremendously important washing hands is to saving lives.
Many of us probably grew up in homes where our parents taught us to wash our hands before we ate or after playing outside. Maybe as kids we didn’t know exactly why we had to wash our hands, but it was still a lesson engrained in us, right?
In some parts of Asia, many children don’t grow up with this common knowledge, because it isn’t so common.
Children in a Believers Church Sunday School class participate in a Global Handwashing Day program on October 15, 2016.
A report from Global Handwashing Partnership stated that “in rural areas [of India], 54 percent of caregivers washed their hands after using the toilet, 13 percent before preparing food, 27 percent before feeding a child, 85 percent after contact with a child’s feces.”
That means many men, women and children across the rural areas of Asia are eating meals cooked by hands that aren’t washed properly with soap. Think about that for a second.
Inexpensive Disease Prevention
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , “About 1.8 million children under the age of 5 die each year from diarrheal diseases and pneumonia, the top two killers of young children around the world. Handwashing with soap could protect about 1 out of every 3 young children who get sick with diarrhea and almost 1 out of 5 young children with respiratory infections like pneumonia.”
These ailments are often contracted by the germs and bacteria living on people’s hands. Teaching people at a young age about the importance of washing hands with soap can also save more lives than any single vaccine or medical intervention, cutting deaths from diarrhea by almost half and deaths from acute respiratory infections by one-quarter .
Taking Part in Global Awareness
Gospel for Asia-supported workers are aware of the need for this vital information, so every year for Global Hand-washing Day, they conduct events throughout Asia to teach the importance of washing hands and how it can help prevent many fatal illnesses.
They put together practical workshops and demonstrate to children and adults alike how to wash their hands properly. They show educational videos on the importance of washing hands and give away soap.
GFA-supported worker teaches how to properly wash your hands at an awareness event in 2016.
At one event held last year at a Bible college, a student said, “I am glad that I got this information on how to wash hands in the right manner. Most people in the villages do not care and bother about this. I know many people from my village, too, who are ignorant on this issue.”
Another student said, “I honestly never had the idea before, but this program is really eye opening for me. How I wish this program can be carried out in remote villages too.”
And Gospel for Asia-supported workers are doing just that! There are villages across Asia that now have critically important information about handwashing.
Larisa, mother of a Bridge of Hope child and attendee of a Global Handwashing Day event, said, “Before we use to wash our hands with only water, but through this program we came to know the importance of washing hands with soap. Now and then we wash our hands neatly with soap and prevent the diseases which comes through uncleanness of our hands.”
Priya, 12, attended another event and said, “I was not aware that the germs and dirt in our hands causes lots of diseases that can lead to death, but today I have learned how important it is to wash hands properly.”
Practical Measures to Save Lives
As more awareness and knowledge spreads about handwashing, we’re hopeful that the number of disease and deaths caused by communicable diseases will be significantly diminished in the years to come. It’s not just a matter of making sure people stay healthy; for us, it’s a matter of taking every measure to protect the precious lives God has created.
If something as simple as showing people how to wash their hands can prevent a premature death and help give others a more abundant life, then GFA-supported workers will go from village to village to share that information.
When we take steps to practically help people, even with seemingly small things like passing on information about how to wash your hands, it can make a lasting difference in their lives—and show them how precious they are to their Creator.
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The majority of Americans living in the U.S. today have never experienced firsthand the massive destructive power of modern-day warfare. Many of us who haven’t served in the military don’t know what it’s like to be shot at or to have to scramble to find a place of safety when enemy artillery is unleashed or bombs start falling. Fortunately for us, the recent wars in which our nation has been involved in have been fought in places far away from our homeland.
Therefore, even though peace is something we value as a people, the word probably doesn’t have the same emotional feel that it has for those who have experienced the peace in their homeland being shattered by armed conflict.
September 21, is International Day of Peace, as declared each year by the 193 member-states of the United Nations. The unique emphasis in 2017 is to show special support for refugees and migrants.
Refugees are persons who have fled their homes and homelands to seek peace and refuge elsewhere. Last year the International Rescue Committee estimated there were more than 65 million such people worldwide who have been displaced by military conflicts, and that doesn’t count the additional 30 million or so who have looked for new countries because of famine and climate issues.
Migrants are individuals who move from place to place always seeking essentials and work of some kind. Today there are massive movements of human beings like this searching for a better life in locations that appear to provide more positive opportunities. Though their homeland may not be at war, the possibilities of knowing a better standard of living and a brighter future are quite limited for such people. Restated, that elusive, sought-after place of peace all too often remains next to impossible to find.
Scripture is a different matter. The prospect of finding peace is found throughout many parts of the Bible. Often such passages refer to an individual’s inner peace. An example of this would be where Jesus comforts His disciples with these words, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you. … Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27).
Just as often, however, one finds passages referring to societal peace. An Old Testament example would be Leviticus 26:6, where the Lord informs Israel what the nation will experience if it follows His decrees: “I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid.”
In a more restricted sense, New Testament believers are instructed by the Apostle Paul to pray for their governmental leaders so Christians “may live quiet and peaceable life” (1 Timothy 2:2). He sees this as an advantage in regards to the spreading the message of Jesus Christ. It is similar to Peter’s comment in his first epistle where he writes in chapter 3, verses 10 and 11, “He who would love life and see good days, … let him seek peace and pursue it.”
In a well-known Old Testament prophetic passage about Jesus, Isaiah refers to our Lord as “the Prince of Peace.” Mature believers know the world will never know lasting peace until the return and reign of Christ. Nevertheless, the followers of Jesus should still seek to presently promote peace in all their relationships. This includes not only the freedom from war, but also from any public disorder or disturbances. A Christ follower should be peaceable and not quarrelsome. More specifically, a peacemaker is an individual who seeks to help settle disputes, disagreements, quarrels and such. After all, didn’t our revered leader say that “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9).
Gospel for Asia takes these words of Jesus quite seriously. Those who visit our U.S. campus often comment on the love and prayer they see demonstrated by our staff. Anyone fortunate enough to travel with us to countries throughout Asia are routinely impressed by the concern shown for the poor and powerless. It is no secret that Asia has many individuals who struggle just to make ends meet. Hopefully, we are known to be a people who reach out in love to such underprivileged individuals. We sincerely want to play a part in making our beloved homeland a nation marked by compassion for all, and especially for those who, for whatever reason, have been marginalized.
The believers on the field are regularly reminded of this command Jesus gave: to love others, even as He Himself did. Those who know the sacred Scriptures well are aware of how, time and again, in His day, Jesus reached out to those who had no other such champion.
All this is to write that we identify strongly with this year’s International Day of Peace and with its 2017 emphasis on the plight of refugees and migrants. It is an understanding that, like the United Nations’ website states, “…ultimately the day is about bringing people together and reminding them of their common humanity.” (To see one of the ways our field partners in the Believers Church are reaching out to help migrants on this day, go here.)
Let us add that we also believe that human beings are not just a product of time and chance, but of an infinite God’s creative genius. Therefore, they are of great value and should all be treated with dignity and respect. And those of us who bow before Christ gladly join hands with all who espouse such values.
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Click here, to read more blogs on Patheos from Gospel for Asia.
Scripture is a different matter. The prospect of finding peace is found throughout many parts of the Bible. Often such passages refer to an individual’s inner peace. An example of this would be where Jesus comforts His disciples with these words, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you. … Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27).
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