Rainwater for Humanity provides clean water to improve community health, increase financial savings and empower women in the Kuttanad region of Kerala, India. Our program develops a sustainable approach to water scarcity in partnership with the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation by financing the construction of rainwater harvesting structures, training women to manage tank networks, and implementing a financially independent vending model.
Most of 800,000 Kuttanad residents have no access to clean water. Waste, pesticides, and sewage have contaminated canal and groundwater. If villagers have access to a public tap, water flows from it only a few times a week. This scarcity results in hours of physical labor spent in collecting water and income spent in purchasing water from vendors. Women in the poorest neighborhoods suffer the most, and waste valuable time that could be spent on income generation or childcare.
We build rainwater harvesting structures to provide clean water, that reduces medical costs from water-related diseases and eliminates unnecessary physical labor from water collection. Each tank is capable of harvesting rainwater for 20 years, safeguarding community health and empowering women financially. In addition, we support the research of construction techniques that incorporate local and environmentally friendly materials to further improve the area's financial and environmental health.
Fully implementing the rainwater harvesting tanks improve the health of the community, reduce medical visits and expenses, and save women's valuable time and effort from collecting water to more productive activities such as encouraging children's schoolwork and working part-time. A clean source of water safeguards the community from water related diseases and increases households' disposable incomes. Furthermore, as tank managers, female community leaders are financially empowered.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
Rainwater for Humanity website