A Canberra-based organisation bringing clean drinking water to villages in Laos is setting its sights on helping one of Australia's closest neighbours.
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The team at Abundant Water is helping to install ceramic water filters in parts of East Timor and training residents to help expand the program.
The team started the expansion from Laos into East Timor after filters were installed in the Timorese embassy and ambassador's residence in Vientiane, the capital of Laos.
Abundant Water chief executive Sunny Forsyth said after discussions with the ambassador, they decided to provide the water filters to people in East Timor.
"For us this is a big step forward," Mr Forsyth said.
"We have a program manager from East Timor studying with us in Laos and he'll be to take what has worked in Laos and bring it back to Timor."
The trainee, Joanico Da Silva, has been working with Abundant Water for the past few months. He returns to East Timor this month to take back what's he's learnt.
Mr Da Silva said he would be able to transfer those skills and bring clean drinking water through filters to many impoverished areas.
"The skill and knowledge that I had practiced will become a good reference for me when I return back to East Timor," Mr Da Silva said.
"I'm very lucky because I will be the first person who will introduce the safe, clean drinking water of ceramic water filters to the community of East Timor."
Abundant Water started in Canberra more than 10 years ago. The company started working in Laos in 2011, and since then more than 27,000 people have received access to clean drinking water.
Due to an inadequate supply of drinking water and poor sanitation, sewerage and hygiene, there is a high incidence of illness and disease like diarrhoea, dysentery, typhoid and cholera in Laos.
Abundant Water has several dozen volunteers working in parts of Laos and about 20 people working in Australia.
Mr Forsyth said the company focused primarily on Laos due to his own experiences seeing issues with drinking water there while working on development projects.
He said the filters were able to help communities in many ways.
"These filters are able to do lots of things, because clean drinking water is not just about people getting sick," Mr Forsyth said.
"Obviously the filters are helping to decrease the rates of diseases, but it's able to reduce the amount of time people would spend having to boil water to drink it, saving them hundreds of hours a year and they can do other tasks."
Mr Forsyth said the next few months would be critical in transferring skills from Laos to East Timor.
"We'll be training more people to learn the complexities and nuances of the system so they can start working with local communities," he said.
