Water for a Mountainside School

TIERRA BLANCA GUERRERO, Mexico – School and water have always gone hand in hand for students of Tierra Blanca.

Every day, students like 12-year-old Luis carried heavy buckets of water up the mountain from their home to school each morning.

The water was necessary because the school building did not have running water for students to drink or wash with. But the trip was arduous and dangerous, as students had to climb a steep path along the edge of the mountain with their heavy load.

One day Luis tripped and fell, dropping two buckets of water and sliding precariously close to the cliff’s edge.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said. “It was the scariest day of my life.”

But when an earthquake shook Luis’ village and damaged his school, CBN’s Operation Blessing International arrived with help.

Teams repaired the cracks in the building and replaced the broken windows, and then they met an even more urgent need—the one for clean, running water. Teams installed a pump to bring water up the mountainside and a purification unit to clean the water for drinking.

“The happiest day of my life was when Operation Blessing installed the pump and water purification system that went all the way up to the school and I knew that we would have water to drink,” Luis said.

Today, Luis and his classmates no longer have to carry buckets of water up the mountainside. And all of the villagers are able to use a filling station at the school to access clean water for their families.

Thanks to these efforts, more than 1,500 people now have access to clean water.

HOW YOU CAN HELP
You can help by making an online donation toward CBN’s Operation Blessing International’s disaster relief efforts. With your support, we can continue to provide emergency relief and recovery. Please make an on-line donation today.