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Bringing Water to India: a Dispatch from the Nonprofit World
In January, charity: water's Scott Harrison went to Orissa, India, to see how villages were doing with new access to water. Sitting on a...
08.06.09
In January, charity: water's Scott Harrison went to Orissa, India, to see how villages were doing with new access to water.
Sitting on a plastic chair in the Engreda village Baptist church, tucked away in the rural hills of Eastern India, I sat and listened to Junash, 41, deliver a speech. Men and women had gathered here to thank us for funding a piped water system that brings clean and safe drinking water down from a new well in the mountains, and Junash explained what had happened here.I learned that the 567 residents of Engreda had big problems with water. Their primary source for years had been a polluted stream in the valley beneath the village, which I saw a few moments later."In the stream, we would remove a little bit of sand, and the water would ooze out into it. We used to drink that, and the children and adults used to get diarrhea," Junash said. "We are poor. Whatever savings we had, we spent on curing our waterborne diseases. The poor remained poor."Not anymore.Through charity: water's partnership with Saks Fifth Avenue last year, more than $540,000 was raised-enough for 100 water projects in Honduras, India, and Ethiopia. Engreda was one of those projects, but the water running from their taps came at a higher price than our funding.The people had petitioned our implementing partner Gram Vikas to help them with the water problem. But before bringing clean water to Engreda, Gram Vikas asked villagers to give a year of their time to construct toilets and bathing rooms on faith.
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