Ready access to clean water has a profound effect on people's health and economic wellbeing. Bringing water closer to people's homes frees up a tremendous amount of women's labor.

Marra asked Angana Chatterji, a professor of anthropology at California Institute of Integral Studies, to develop a proposal for a water project in India. Chatterji, a woman with long experience of environmental activism in India and internationally, responded with an outline for a project brilliant in its simplicity.

 

For her partner Chatterji chose Vasundhara, an organization dedicated to sustainable management of natural resources through local action. Beginning in a single village in Orissa, the poorest state in India, the project developed a watershed and built a local water collecting pool, where water is collected during the rainy season to last the entire year.

The work begun in one village is now being replicated elsewhere in Orissa, and formerly arid land is becoming green as the watersheds seed grasses near the villages. All it took was a good idea, one bulldozer, and a local partner.

Visit vasundharaorissa.org