Finally – running water and electricity!

Beginning of February, Edeltrud Pinger, Vice President of Neuwied-Matara-Friendship- Association, visited some of the scholarship students, newly accepted in our programme. These visits are meant to give information about the families’ life conditions whose children are suggested by the school administration. In the course of these visits, we can get evidence, and the English teacher’s translations help to speak with the children and their parents and thus, find out that they really deserve being accepted in our scholarship programme. That’s the way we can show responsibility and recruit sponsors in Germany. There are 24 of them and some of them even support more than one child in a family, actually there are 28 altogether.

Wasana’s case is a special one as we could discover when visiting her place. Bare brickwork of  a small house, no running water, no electricity, one bed for four girls – there was a second bed, but no mattress – a kind of carpet for the mother and the youngest baby to sleep on the floor.

After the spontaneous visit at the office of the water authority, Mrs. Pinger handed over 25,000 rupees to the teacher who supervised the necessary work to supply the family with a water pipeline of about 500 meters, water-taps and shower outside the house. And suddenly – strange things happen – there was help from a government programme to provide electricity. For Wasana’s family this is what we call a “quantum leap”: running, clean water – a basic need that everybody should have access to.

…..And there was even some money left for a new mattress!