Poverty is everywhere in India. We know this intellectually but the emotional reality is somewhat different. It is impossible to walk down a street in any town or city without witnessing people who are scraping a living one way or another.

People live wherever they can, on pavements, in the middle of traffic circles and under overpasses. Poverty is not socially distinct as in the west, it exists cheek by jowel with wealth. My street here in Pondicherry is like the one I lived on in Calcutta. There are some nicer houses and there are some people who live in 1 room or a shack and cook on the street. Everyone knows everyone and much of daily life is conducted out in the open to get the benefit of fresh air. Child care is shared amongst an extended family and everyone knows everything.

Millions of people in India live on the streets and in slums

The contrast in housing can be startling

Over time as experience grows you to learn to identify subtle differentiations in income; the quality of a sari, how well kept hair is, or how clean a person smells (soap is a luxury if you live on 50 rupees – about 60p – a day) but the key identifier is height and weight.

Living here I’m surrounded by thin wiry people, many of whom aren’t very tall. I used to underestimate children’s ages by about 2-3 years because I was comparing them to western children who live on very different diets. This difference in height and weight arise from nutrition, access to sanitation and healthcare. Medical research documents that chronic childhood environmental exposure to fecal germs leads to different diseases and can be an important cause of stunting and malnutrition.

When I visited different schools in the field, I began to get a feel for the area, not just from the children’s appearance (hair and eyes), but also from the condition of their school uniforms and the amount of energy the children have. Some schools had great or small proportions of children who were noticeably grubbier and a bit smellier – soap was out of their families reach – there literally is a stench of poverty. Other schools had smaller children in the same grades; making several school visits in a day the size differences across classes are noticeable. This is why school sanitation is so vital – every thing that can be done to improve a child’s well being and potential future, inches them closer to a life out of poverty.

Illakiya is one of the many people in India who struggle to live on less than £1 a day

3 small bananas costs 10rs – a fifth of many people’s daily wage

So how would someone like Illakiya (who I wrote about recently) get by on 50 rupees (rs) a day, which is what she sometimes earns. It would be very very very hard. It would be a struggle to meet your basic nutritional requirements, let alone buying anything else. A kilo of low quality rice costs about 20rs, lentils or mung beans would be 30 or 40rs a kilo, 3 small bananas cost 10rs, 500ml of milk is 15rs, a 5km bus ride is 5rs. When you think about the economies of living hand to mouth it becomes clear why small corner shops sell goods (soap, shampoo, crisps, biscuits) in small 1r or 5r packets – because that’s all that is affordable.

Jane Bond is volunteer Project Officer for Wherever the Need India. She has been living and volunteering in India since November 2011, based in Tamil Nadu since February 2013.

“The Summer of 2012 was a very grim one for UK farmers. When the BBC invited me to audition for a documentary titled ‘Toughest Place to be a Farmer’ it seemed a good opportunity to experience a place contrasting the muddy fields of Devon . Fortunately I was selected and within a month flown off to an unknown destination.The BBC do not want you to overthink this and need you quickly on location. Only at the airport was I told that I was off to a remote part of North East Kenya to join the Samburu tribe.

Richard with his host Lemergichen

Richard learns how the Samburu farm

Arriving at the village in Samburu County (Mpagas) was a complete culture shock with the initial thought of ‘What have I let myself in for?’ However these doubts were soon put aside as my hosts could not have been more welcoming. They made it really easy to become immersed in their lifestyle and culture. Although living on a constant knife edge I found their generosity,sense of community and culture quite overwhelming. Their lives revolve around finding water and my experience of digging and going down into their wells made me decide that this was an area that I definitely could help with. On returning home my wife (Heather) and I formed Aid for Samburu.

Water is so scarce in the dry season, people have to dig for 3 hours to water their livestock

A rainwater reservoir would provide clean water all year round

Following the programme we had an amazing response with donations. We were also contacted by David Crosweller from Wherever the Need who steered us in the right direction on building a rainwater reservoir for the village. Their advise and experience is very welcome. So we are now actively fund raising in our area and receiving great support. Please donate today to help. You can follow our progress on www.aidforsamburu.org.uk and can watch the original show on YouTube.

Thank you for your support.”

Richard Gibson

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After enduring rain, ice and snow throughout their training, the Ripples team finally enjoyed some good weather as they dove into the 220-mile cycle challenge from London to Paris last weekend (May 16th-18th). The feat of endurance was tackled by a team of 19 staff members from Ripples showrooms all over the country, raising money to further support their ecosan and clean water project in the village of Arasur in Tamil Nadu, India.

The team celebrate their achievement in Paris

Marshfield Bakery kindly donated a large supply of their flapjacks to keep the riders going, which were thoroughly enjoyed on the journey. The ride itself happily went very smoothly, with sunshine almost all the way and only a couple of punctures to slow things down.

We would like to extend a huge thank you to the Ripples team and everyone who has supported them. With your dedication and support, we are able to change the lives of those most in need.

Help Ripples reach their £2,000 target, and donate today

A very smiley friendly lady in a purple sari and barefoot comes out of one of the classrooms. This is the headmistress – Thenmoshi. She takes me to her classroom to meet her students who are sitting on the floor reading English from the blackboard at the front.

The sight of me means a break from lessons and they crowd around me. They are reluctant to say much and need a bit of prodding from Thenmoshi to speak English but they smile when I take their picture. They chant good morning to me and I ask them how they are; we practice English and they are extremely amused by my terrible Tamil.

Alphabet window bars

Marudor school children

In South India English is widely spoken, more than in the north. All Indian children learn 2 languages at school; depending on the state and the school this is a combination of a local language, English or Hindi -official language. Hindi is rarely taught in Tamil Nadu and the children learn English instead. Tamils see themselves as the oldest and most original “Indians” because of their Dravidian heritage and Hindi is the language of the northern invaders. Men are often seen on the streets dressed all in white as a sign of Tamil pride.

If I speak Hindi here (my most fluent language) people may say stiffly “we don’t speak Hindi”, look confused or ask me where I lived in the north. Out here in the rural areas, it is Tamil mostly and English rarely. The language, food and much of the culture is so different its like being in a new country from other areas I have lived in India.

Thenmoshi takes me to use our ecosan toilet block. They are very nice, much nicer than many public toilets – not being flooded, stinking and filthy. I meet 3 giggling and curious girls on my way to her office, they are charming but struggle to communicate with me. Arumagum translates for me.

Marudor pupils

Thenmoshi

Thenmoshi gives me a drink. She tells me about herself and how the new toilet block is going. I can see 3 boys peeping at me around a corner – out of her eye line. She is clearly a dedicated and passionate teacher, the children in the school seem very happy and well adjusted and she is obviously fond of them. She has been teaching for 25 years, since she was 18 years old and now the school is her pride and joy. She has 9 teachers, 150 children and tells me the best part of her job is “the very lovable children and teaching english”.

Marudor school’s new ecosan

I ask her about the toilets which are only a few months old. The school held a parents meeting and everyone is very satisfied. She goes on to say that the toilets are far more hygienic, very useful and everyone is happy with them. I ask if there is anything else the school needs and she tells me that a water filter would be wonderful as there is a factory nearby which pollutes all the school and the local villages groundwater.

Jane Bond is volunteer Project Officer for Wherever the Need India. She has been living and volunteering in India since November 2011, based in Tamil Nadu since February 2013.

This summer, Virgin Money Giving are spreading the love by giving away £2,000 in donations to help you raise more for the charities you care about.

Whether you’re taking part in an organised event or taking on your own personal challenge, you can enter the prize draw every month throughout the summer to win a £500 donation to your fundraising page.

Every time you receive a donation to your page in May, June, July and August, Virgin Money Giving will automatically enter you into a prize draw for that month. There is £500 up for grabs each month throughout the draw, and because every donation gets you one entry, the more donations you receive the more chance you’ll have of winning.

So get yourself in the mood for the Summer of Love and set up your fundraising page now.

Thanks to support from the ACT Foundation, the people of Kumudimmolai now have 90 more ecosan, clean water and livelihoods.

Tamil Nadu in the south of India is considered to be one of the wealthiest states in the country, but behind the statistics of economic growth and development lies another story – one of acute poverty. The rural population of Tamil Nadu ranks among the poorest in the world, with an estimated 12 million people living on or below the poverty line.

Kumudimoolai is a rural village in Tamil Nadu, 30 miles south of the bustling city of Cuddalore. The 1,973 people living here belong to one the poorest and most excluded social groups in India, and when we first visited the community, poverty was rife. There were no working toilets in the village, which meant people were forced to find somewhere to go out in the open, which was spreading illness and disease. On top of this, the area is prone to flooding, and is always water logged. Human waste and in-organic fertilisers had contaminated the ground and water supply, making it hazardous to drink. Maintaining work was also a struggle for many people; in rural areas such as this many people are dependent on seasonal agricultural work, which leaves them without any employment for 3-4 months of every year. This makes it impossible for them to become financially stable.

Kumudimoolai village

Kumudimoolai school ecosan

We were introduced to Kumudimoolai through the resourcefulness of the children living there. Over the past several years, we have been working in the area, building ecosan (composting) toilets in several of the schools. The children loved the ecosan so much, that they took home stories of how big a difference a toilet can make. Before we knew it, we were getting requests from families all over the village to help them build ecosan in their own homes, and when the ACT Foundation chose to fund a project there, we were able to honour those requests.

After supporting a successful project in the nearby village of Villupalayam, the ACT Foundation were enthusiastic to support ecosan projects elsewhere. By the end of 2012, Kumudimoolai had 90 more ecosan toilets, free and clean water for the whole village, and extra employment.

One of the ecosan toilets

The water tower can store 60,000 litres

Our ecosan toilets have proved to be perfect for the flood-prone village, as the ‘waste’ is stored above ground and tightly sealed, so even in a flood there is no pollution. Initial surveys are incredibly positive, with an almost 92% usage rate of the toilets. On a recent site visit, Jane Bond (Volunteer Project Officer in India) reported that the biggest reaction she received from people, especially women, was how much easier and better life is now with a toilet; their lives are safer, healthier and cleaner.

Because the water in the area was so salty and contaminated by fertiliser chemicals, we had to seek a good quality water source from outside the village. With permission, a borehole was drilled in the next neighbourhood, allowing water to be pumped into the village and stored in a new water tower. The water tower stores a staggering 60,000 litres, which means that there is always a ready supply of fresh, clean water for everyone in the village.

Enjoying clean drinking water

Collecting water from the new water tap

The final part of the project has helped bring a year-round income to the 70 families who struggled with seasonal work, by providing them with either cows or goats for milking. One lady in the village – Selvi Mani – got a goat. She is now able to get a profit every day by selling the milk, and is planning to sell the dung as compost during the next agricultural season.

Thanks to the ACT Foundation, the lives of the people of Kumudimoolai have been transformed. With proper sanitation, clean water and sustainable livelihoods, the community will be healthier and safer, and able to work their way out of poverty.

After visiting the project, Renu Ghale, Grants Manager for the ACT Foundation, commented that:
“The ecosan toilets are a great revelation and the composting and fertiliser processes have had an amazing impact on the Kumudimoolai community, who are able to gain livelihoods and become model farmers for other villages.”

We look forward to updating you in the future of the real and lasting difference the project will make to the village.

Renu Ghale from the ACT Foundation visits Kumudimoolai

Bathroom retailer Ripples have been dedicated supporters of Wherever the Need for several years now, having already raised £10,000 for eco-toilets, clean water and a livelihood programme in Tamil Nadu, India. Showrooms all over the country have been taking part in the fundraising activities, and this latest challenge will bring staff together from around the UK.

On 16th May, a team of 21 cyclists will tackle the challenging 220-mile ride from London to Paris in just 3 days. The group, which includes MD Paul Crow and brand manager Juliet Harris, are aiming to raise £2,000 to further support their sanitation and clean water project in the village of Arasur, India. They have been training hard over the past months, braving freezing weather and suffering injury, but their determination has carried them on.

© Ripples

On the team website, Paul Crow writes “When Ripples started raising money for…Wherever The Need, we didn’t really know what we were letting ourselves in for to be honest.  A luxury bathroom company providing Ecosan…facilities for a small village in India seemed the perfect match and helped create a nice feel-good factor amongst the team. What we didn’t allow for was the sense of pride that would develop as the project grew and grew and for all the right reasons we are rather determined to keep up this good work.”

Please support the Ripples team by donating to them.

Thank you.

I spend a day with one of our field staff, Arumugam to help me better understand our project work and life in rural Tamil Nadu. He takes me to some villages we are planning on working in as soon as we have funds.

I know the facts – 7 million+ rural households here in Tamil Nadu don’t have access to toilets – 76% of the rural population. Water quality is worsening, largely due to human fecal waste in drinking water; 91% of water tested in one study was contaminated. Over the last five years incidences of acute diarrheal diseases have increased from about 116,000/year to 523,000/year. Today I’m going to be meeting just a few of the people who live with these conditions on a daily basis.

 
We go to a village called Boothampedi; the road doesn’t reach the village so we walk along a small dyke; on either side goats and young cows are gazing in recently harvested paddy fields. It’s very hot and it’s quiet in the midday heat. The houses are small and made from mud with thatch roofs, small mud stoves are outside and piles of sticks/dried cow dung for fuel.

Arumugam shows me a banana tree and we walk down a small path, stopping to admire a veg patch; he points out chillies, aubergines and potatoes. We are looking at a water pump when a young woman comes up the path to talk to us. Her name is Illakiya and she is 21, while we talk it becomes clear she is bright, curious and interested. The vegetable garden we have just admired is hers.

I am a significant object of interest, I might be the first white woman she has ever seen. She’s so vibrant I take the opportunity to ask her questions I don’t usually ask and Arumugam translates as fast as he can. He tells me she can understand some English – she is replying to some of what I’m saying in Tamil before he’s translated.

Illakiya says she left school when she was about 14, though there doesn’t seem to be a definite reason. Now she is a tailor and sometimes earns up to 50 rupees a day. I ask if she’s married which makes her laugh and she says no, but she might get married in a few years. I ask if she is ever ill and she tells me she often has headaches, a cough and a fever. When I ask, she doesn’t know why she is ill.

I’m interested by her illness as I know respiratory problems are increasingly being linked to contaminated water and that headaches can be a side effect of having to wait until nightfall to go to the toilet. This means that women have to get up very early or they have to go at night. I ask her what she thinks about open air defecation and she tells Arumugam that she only defecates in the open once every 2 days, it’s inconvenient and she’d like a toilet.

I look around the village and think about the practicalities of what she is saying. It means walking around in the dark, probably without shoes – I might cut myself which could mean tetanus, my clothes might get torn or dirty and I have to wash them by hand, I’d be bitten by mosquitos maybe catching malaria or dengue. I’d need to be quiet so no one knew what I was doing – I might get bitten by a snake like a young man in a village we visited that morning. Considering all this I’m not surprised she doesn’t defecate more than once every 2 days. I’m humbled by the reality of her life in comparison to mine.

Jane Bond is volunteer Project Officer for Wherever the Need India. She has been living and volunteering in India since November 2011, based in Tamil Nadu since February 2013.

One of the fundamental benefits of Wherever the Needs approach to Sanitation and water is our compost toilets which mean that human waste is safely and effectively recycled. Human waste is very hazardous to health and can easily enter the water system if not properly managed.

Here in India only 30% of the country has a sewage system and much of that is leaking or incomplete, common opinion being that around 20% of the system is approaching effective; mostly waste is dumped into water systems or into pits which often leak, leaching waste through the soil. Each person’s faecal waste is about 127kg/per year; every gram contains: 10 million pathogens, 1 million protozoa, 100,000 helminths (intestinal worms) and 10,000 worms and viruses.
It makes my stomach turn and I feel pretty nauseous when I think of India’s 1.2 billion people and the incredibly huge amount of human waste they generate annually, most of it slowly creeping into the water system.

So, David (Wherever the Need CEO) and Paramasivan (head of our Indian office) take me to see our central compost facility. I’m excited and interested to see this but also slightly nervous as I don’t know what to expect. I have experience of composting from allotments and gardens in the UK but this is a bit different to veggie peelings and greenery!

The centre is outside Cuddalore, Tamil Nadu and we are in a very rural area. I see figures which look a bit like scarecrows in fields and outside some houses; to scare off demons and bad luck. Crowds of people are walking along the side of the road coming back from the fields, more people than I have every before seen in one place in rural India.

We get to the centre and I’m shown the crates of compost which have been collected. They are piled high and the place is pretty full filled. It’s a hot and humid day but there is no smell at all – it looks like very high quality compost to me, I would definitely use it. Human faecal matter composts down by about half – 127kg changes to 70kgs. I researched this one day and size varies significantly according to diet – India is second on the global size list and I was amused to discover that New Yorkers have the smallest! No wonder Woody Allen is always complaining…

The process and design of our ecosan is explained to me in more detail – how the urine and faecal waste are separated to prevent smells from occurring, how the pathogens and other bacterium are killed off in different ways as part of the compost process and the necessity of the addition of ash, sawdust, sand, organic materials as a bulking/drying agent. We recently started using a special bacteria which has made a significant different to compost time – the speed is so incredible it’s hard to believe! We talk about the urine and dilution and filtering requirements it has. The heat here seems to speed up the effect of composting compared to the UK. If only I had some pot plants I could test it out on – but India doesn’t do them!

Jane Bond is volunteer Project Officer for Wherever the Need India. She has been living and volunteering in India since November 2011, based in Tamil Nadu since February 2013.

I’m adjusting to rural India and as we travel out to look at projects I am fascinated. Main roads are filled with cows, buses, motorbikes, bicycles and pedestrians sharing the same space – pavements don’t exist and traffic lights are often ignored. The river of humanity is chaotic and noisy, everyone honks musical horns, fails to use indicators and drives where they like. Only cows placidly move along, serene in the knowledge they are the rulers of the road!

Roads become smaller, emptier and windier deeper into the rural areas. Its harvest time, paddy fields are being hand scythed by groups of people, haystacks are common, we slow down for herds of bullocks and goats walking along the roads and grain are being spread across the road. This is for threshing rice; as vehicles drive over the rice the outer husk is separated from the grain. I think this is an ingenious labour saving solution.

We stop to see the rice grown on Wherever the Need’s research plot (testing the effectiveness of organic composts and fertilisers). Unfortunately just after the seedlings were planted a cyclone hit, destroying them. Afterwards rice seed were scattered in the plot as the compost had already been laid; we didn’t expect much to grow. David and I are completely amazed by the huge pile of rice sacks in front of us neither of us can quite believe it. The yield is 40% higher than a plot that size would usually generate with industrial fertilizers. The reason for the increase is the repeated use of our compost which has increased soil quality and yield over time.

A huge sack of rice is unstitched and for the first time I see a grain of rice still in its husk – its surprisingly tough. I’m taught how to rub your hands together to release the grain from the husk – magic. Unsurprisingly I’m not very good at it and I’d go hungry if I had to do that every day. The husks keep the grains safe – if the husk gets wet the grains inside will still be edible, it can withstand a soaking, dry out and still be edible. The husks keep pests and insects away will keep the rice for very long periods of time.

Each sack is over 50 kilos but wouldn’t feed a below poverty line family for more than 2-3 months – it would keep me going for years. Rice is India’s staple and a key component of nearly every meal poor people here eat –as a grain or ground up into flour. It’s hard to imagine for westerners – just like supermarkets are hard to imagine for people here.

As I stand and look at the pile of rice it sinks in how significant harvests are to subsistence farmers fortunes; many can’t afford to buy fertilizers. Affordable organic compost which generates a higher yield would really changes lives.

Jane Bond is volunteer Project Officer for Wherever the Need India. She has been living and volunteering in India since November 2011, based in Tamil Nadu since February 2013.