Clean Water for Families Working in Tea Fields

We need your help to provide clean water to 6,500 families in India, a crucial step to eliminating poverty!

Assam, India is famous for being one of the world's largest producers of high-quality black tea and home to Numi Organic Tea's largest supplier: the Tonganagaon tea community. Yet Assam is one of India's states with the poorest access to safe drinking water. Fewer than 1 in 15 households have access to tap water, and residents suffer from water-borne illnesses, poor nutrition, and more. Many women and children walk up to 3 hours per day to collect and carry water for their families, facing security risks, poor health, and barriers to productive livelihoods. Without access to latrines or water for washing, many girls drop out of school when they hit puberty. Not surprisingly, Assam also ranks as second among India's 31 states in girls' dropout rate before the end of primary school, second to last in women's work participation, third in infant mortality rates, first in women's anemia, and first in crimes against women.

Access to clean water is crucial to eradicating extreme poverty and associated health risks. The Together for H2OPE Project — a partnership between U.S.-based Women's Earth Alliance, Numi Organic Tea and Numi Foundation, as well as the Chamong Tea Company and several local Indian NGO's — will ensure safe drinking water to the Tonganagaon tea community through locally-driven water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) solutions. WASH training will teach community mobilizers how to boil, filter, and safely transport and store water. Infrastructure improvements will reduce contamination of existing wells. Community education and leadership development will empower self-selected community representatives to take on leadership, training, and demonstration roles to educate their neighbors in healthy water, sanitation, and hygiene practices. As a result, the residents of Tonganagaon will have safe water systems for generations to come.

Update from the Field

March 2018

Your donations have helped people like Lakshmi (pictured to the right). Lakshmi is a young mother of three bright, happy children. Every morning for many years, she has pumped water from the hand pump outside her home into open-top plastic container. She uses this water for drinking, washing, and cooking. Her children frequently suffered from diarrhea because they were unknowingly drinking contaminated water. Lakshmi, like many other mothers in the community, didn’t know that it was the water they were drinking that was causing their children to be sick.

With YOUR help, the Together for H2OPE Project is equipping families like Lakshmi’s with locally-sourced water filters. These filters are helping families decontaminate their water at home, so less children have to suffer from water-borne illnesses. Your donations are also helping to educate the community about water sanitation and hygiene. Children are especially susceptible to water contamination, so proper sanitation and hygiene education is extremely important. Every person that your donations help goes on to teach their friends and neighbors about water safety. Your donations are helping spread knowledge throughout India, which is saving countless lives. Thank you for your continued support!

Earth Island Institute is a non-profit, public interest, membership organization that supports people who are creating solutions to protect our shared planet. Earth Island institute is the fiscal sponsor for Women's Earth Alliance. Women's Earth Alliance equips women with the skills and tools they need to protect our earth and strengthen communities from the inside out. They work with local leaders who build up other leaders. In some of the most threatened places on earth, WEA partners are: saving indigenous seeds, selling clean cookstoves, launching sustainable farms, providing safe water, protecting land rights, and much more. With local leadership guiding each WEA project, they design capacity-building training where women access skills and tools in appropriate technology, entrepreneurship, and advocacy. They gain seed funding, mentorship, and a global alliance of other women leaders. With these resources in hand, participants go on to launch their own environmental projects and teach others to do the same.