Clean Water Reached Yumi's Village in the Ecuadorian Jungle
A contaminated river left jungle families sick, and reaching care decided who lived. Yumi now carries clean-water filters to villages no one else reaches.
Yumi's name means "sweet and strong" in Shuar, and both halves fit. She grew up in the Ecuadorian jungle, in years marked by hardship, until her family came to faith and her home slowly became a steadier place. What she lived through gave her a specific ambition: to protect children who were where she had been.
““I don’t want other children to live through what I did.””
Last year, illness moved through her village. The river had been contaminated, and every village up and down it was living through the same illness and the same deaths. It was treatable, and mostly survivable, for anyone who could reach care; simple access was the line between who lived and who died.
On a recent visit to a jungle village, a woman shared her story with our team. Her little boy and a neighbor's fell ill around the same time. That family could reach care, and their boy recovered; he is well now, running around the village. Hers could not. She had no money for the ambulance flight out, a back injury that kept her from carrying him the hours it would take to walk, and no clinic within reach. So she held him, day after day, until he was gone.
This is why water filters matter more than they seem to. Through Give Water, families receive in-home filters, and local missionaries come back for a year of teaching visits. Within weeks, filters were in homes across Yumi's area, and the change in people's health was striking enough that a visiting doctor remarked on it.
Yumi doesn't serve only her own village anymore. She gives up her free time to travel by bus, then farther on foot and by canoe, to reach families no one else is reaching. Project M:25 donors provide the filters, buckets and other support, while local missionaries follow up with teaching visits.
Many places she goes are dangerous cartel hubs where children grow up with no one watching out for them, and where reaching them means real risk to herself. She goes anyway. "This is what God's love looks like," she says. "Meeting needs without expecting anything in return."
A filter in the house prevents sickness before another mother has to weigh her child's life against the cost of a clinic she can't reach. The filters are the visible part; the year of showing up afterward is what builds the trust a village decides to keep.
Your gift of life-saving clean water opens doors for transformation and lets hope grow in villages that are hard to reach. When you give, you stand behind people like Yumi, who go where no one else is going.
Imagine how many more lives could be touched as we partner with more courageous leaders. With your help, we can deliver not just solutions but lasting hope.
Watch the mini-documentary: "We lost 4 children": A story of how clean water helped stop an epidemic
In a remote community in Ecuador's jungle, an outbreak linked to unsafe water took children's lives. We partnered with local leaders and Yumi, who grew up in this community and is now preparing for ministry, to bring in-home water filters and training. This is a story of a village's courage, Yumi's calling, and the donors who made the filters possible, so children can live, learn, and thrive.
Short on time? Here’s a summarized version of Yumi’s story and the impact clean water is making in his community.
