RSA Water Project
Project Briefing
The RSA Water Project provides an innovative approach to eradicating extreme poverty by bringing water and environmental sanitation to individual households in rural India.
What is the problem?
More than 1 billion people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water and more than 2.4 billion do not have access to improved sanitation. As a result, more than 3.4 million people, mostly children, die from water-related diseases each year.
Our response
The RSA Water Project is based on the belief that improving water and sanitation is the single quickest way to break the poverty cycle. By doing so, we can enable communities to develop their own personal, technical, commercial and environmental skills.
We are running pilot schemes in three villages in India. We use "infrastructure networking" techniques to provide integrated water and sanitation at a fraction of the cost of conventional methods.
These techniques have been proven in urban areas of Baroda, Indore and Ahmedabad where improving water and sanitation has made a very rapid impact across a range of economic and social indicators (health, literacy and family incomes).
The project has been developed in conjunction with Himanshu Parikh, former Director of Buro Happold India and winner of the UN World Habitat Award. We are working with the Byrraju Foundation, a non-governmental organization (NGO) established by Satyam Computer Services in India. It works in nearly 200 villages in Andhra Pradesh, implementing water and sanitation projects.
The project has three major objectives:
(a) To demonstrate the viability of "infrastructure networking" in rural areas where 70% of the world's poor still live.
(b) To demonstrate the impact that improving water and sanitation has across a range of economic and social indicators (health, literacy, family incomes etc).
(c) To use what is learnt from these projects to develop a sustainable investment model that will allow these techniques to be rolled out more widely.
Our achievements
The pilot project will take place in three rural villages in the Godavari region of Andhra Pradesh: Tadinada, Juvvalapalem and Pratalamareka. Between them they have about 10,500 inhabitants.
In Tadinanda we have already completed the infrastructure work.
In Juvvalapalem and Pratalamareka technical surveys have been undertaken and financing is being arranged for the community's share of the capital costs. Socio-economic data was benchmarked in November and physical work will begin half way through 2008.
Financing for the pilots is provided by the local communities, the state government of Andhra Pradesh and the RSA.
Get involved
We are actively seeking corporate partners in the UK and India to invest in these water and sanitation projects. We need organizations to contribute to our working groups to find out how such initiatives can be made successful, sustainable and mutually beneficial.
