Chris Draper, Abundant Water’s first Australian Volunteer, is currently based in Timor-Leste, supporting the organisation’s growing presence in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) sector.

The Abundant Water team continues to face one of Timor-Leste’s greatest logistical challenges: its roads. Chris Draper, Abundant Water’s Supervising Project Officer shares his experience: "What makes Abundant Water so incredible is that our vendors travel these challenging roads to make sales to those in their communities. Even if the road is muddy or partially collapsed, our vendors are able to bring clean water to the most remote locations of the country"

Abundant Water recently joined Mercy Corps Timor-Leste staff to visit beneficiaries of filters distributed under Mercy Corps' Hatutan Project. The Hatutan Project is an initiative to improve literacy, nutrition and health outcomes across 440 schools in Timor-Leste, and has seen Mercy Corps work with schools and their surrounding communities to increase health, nutrition and dietary practices across 4 focus municipalities in Timor-Leste: Ainaro, Ermera, Manatuto and Oe-Cusse.

The AW team recently travelled to Suai, Timor-Leste, to install filters in 5 primary and middle schools as part of the US Embassy’s Ambassador's Small Grants Fund. 17 of our large filter units were installed in the schools, which will help to provide 1,198 students and teachers with access to safe drinking water throughout the school day.

In December, the team in Timor held another vendor meeting with 14 vendors from across 9 municipalities. The team has been working hard this year to learn more from sales in the field, and have been testing our hypotheses in other districts to ensure they are replicable.

Abundant Water is pleased to announce that we have received a generous second grant from the US Embassy in Timor-Teste as part of their Ambassador’s Small Grants Fund!

Abundant Water will use this funding to install our new 28 litre water filters in 5 schools in Cova Lima to bring clean drinking water to over 800 school children.