On Indonesian Moluccas, many people still are living without access to clean water. Every day, they use many hours on procuring water from streams or from boats bringing drinking water to the islands.

Thanks to a combined effort by the locally based Fastro Toma, the Dutch foundation TitanÉ and Grundfos on the 100 Villages project, those conditions will be changed for 100 villages on the islands. The goal is to improve the standard of living considerably for the inhabitants of the villages.

Solar panels and Grundfos pumps will help ensure a long-lasting and autonomous supply of clean drinking water in tanks of up to 8,000 litres. They will be installed at convenient places in the villages on bases with integrated taps. The first installations were completed in 2004, and none of the pumps in these installations have required maintenance so far. After 5 years, they still are operating without faults.

Some villages already have wells, which only need to be equipped with an SQ pump, so they can be completed quickly. In other villages, water has to be located, and only after this is completed, can drilling begin.

The first installations were established on the capital island of Ambon and the islands close to it. Some of the 100 villages are located much farther away in the group of islands. Here, Fastro Toma expect to use more time on the installation due to the long distances.

To date, projects have been completed in seven villages – meaning that more than 8,000 people have obtained considerably better living conditions. The project aims to complete installations in all of the 100 villages by 2015.