A farmer, he has been working the soil since he was five years old. He and the Honduran land have a close relationship. The land depends on him to cultivate its capacity, and he depends on the land to give him the harvest he needs to live.

Saturnino lives in the district of El Negrito in rural Honduras, in a small, spread-out village called Sinai. He moved from a nearby district thinking there would be more opportunity in El Negrito. Arriving with only the clothes on his back and a small pack, he soon realized his new home faced a great challenge he hadn’t anticipated: a lack of safe water.

It became a daily burden to find water to bathe or wash his clothes, let alone drink. In his old home, he had a well by his home. In his new home, he had to find a mountain water source or trek down to the river to do these most basic tasks. But Saturnino was determined to make life work in this new district.

After saving his profits for several years, Saturnino could buy his own land. He could afford his particular plot of land only because it was a challenging area to farm, located on a steep mountainside. That didn’t discourage Saturnino, though. He knew how to make any land grow crops. On this hillside, he grew beans and corn.

One day, Saturnino made a discovery that would change his life – he found a spring tucked away on his mountainside land. He decided to build his home right next to this water source. Although the water wasn’t yet safe for drinking, Saturnino knew this was a discovery that could change life for all of Sinai.

Water For People had been working in rural and dispersed communities like Sinai to implement creative water solutions, because in these extremely small and spread out areas, large piped water systems aren’t practical. After Saturnino’s discovery on his land, Water For People and the families in Sinai located similar springs around their homes, protected these sources, and created small-scale technology to pipe water to houses and filter the water to be safe to drink.

There’s something in the water that changes everything for people like Saturnino and hard-to-reach communities like his. People who never thought they’d have safe water suddenly have a new outlook on life, a new optimism for the future.

Finding water solutions for communities like Saturnino’s in Honduras is critical to truly reaching everyone with reliable and sustainable water access. Saturnino’s discovery and Water For People’s partnership helped improve life for families who thought they would never have water access, and now generations to come will reap the benefits.