Coping with the Economic Crisis:

Paying the Bills

Photo: Mercy Corps Indonesia

It's never been harder to make a living in the crowded, open-sewered slums of North Jakarta.

Most of the neighborhood's two million residents are poor migrants from other parts of Indonesia who aren't legally employable. So they're forced to scrape by in a vast informal economy — encompassing everything from pushcart restaurants to cheap t-shirt vendors — and pay ever-higher prices for staple foods and other necessities.

Saraswati's husband makes about $4 a day hawking snacks and drinks. The couple and their four children squeeze into a 150-square-foot house with unreliable electricity and no running water. They buy jerry cans full of water for cooking and drinking — water that could be contaminated.

Drinking dirty water is life-threatening. In 2002, more than 3.5 million people died as a result of poor water, sanitation and hygiene, according to the UN.

And the cost of that water alone eats up nearly 10 percent of Saraswati's family income — a heavy burden on a family budget already under siege from skyrocketing food and fuel costs.

"Life is getting harder these days," explains Saraswati, 45. "Everything is expensive now. I spend the money only for our daily meals and monthly regular expenses like electricity, water and gasoline for cooking. The only way to survive is sacrificing the children's education. We can't afford it, so they only went until high school."

You can help families increase their resiliency in a time of uncertainty.

In her neighborhood of Penjaringan, Mercy Corps field teams are building a communal water-supply system. We're working with a private-water company, Palyja, to construct a 900-meter pipeline from a tank that will store filtered water. By mid-December, 60 families will get clean drinking water piped directly into their homes for a monthly fee — cutting water bills by an estimated 40 to 80 percent.

Yet huge challenges remain: including securing better job opportunities, getting garbage service and upgrading rickety and overcrowded housing conditions.

Your donation can help us extend a hand to the least fortunate in Indonesia's sprawling capital and other places where hope is needed in a time of uncertainty.