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,” she says. So she trained for ministry and learned how to reach vulnerable children.”
Last year, illness moved through her village. The river had been contaminated, so every village up and down was experiencing the same illness and death. It was treatable and mostly survivable if they could access care. Simple access was the dividing 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's well now, running around the village. Hers couldn't. 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 just held him. She sat and rocked him in her arms, day after day, until he was gone. Even as she told the story, she instinctively swayed as if holding a child who wasn't there anymore.
This is why water filters matter more than they seem to. Project M:25's Give Water program installs in-home filters and returns for a year of teaching visits. Within weeks, filters were installed in homes across Yumi's area, and the change in people's health was so impressive that a visiting doctor remarked on it.
Yumi doesn't serve only her own village anymore. She sacrifices her free time traveling by bus, then farther still 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 educational 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."
The gift of a filtration system prevents sickness in the house 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 clean water doesn’t just save lives—it opens doors for transformation and allows hope to thrive in unimaginable ways. When you give, you’re not just addressing immediate needs— you’re investing in people like Yumi, who will carry that hope forward and make it grow.
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 this 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 the lives of many children. We partnered with local leaders and Yumi, who grew up in this tribe 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 a community of donors standing together 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.
