Remember the long drop?

TEXT ALUM33 £5 to 70070/ DONATE ONLINE/ CALL 020 7183 1270

Imagine living without a toilet

Do you remember arriving in your community and being shocked at the lack of sanitation facilities? Maybe there was a long drop, maybe you had to dig your own. For some of the communities we work with, the lack of sanitation means illness and high risk of disease.

This is a reality for women like Sreenidhi and her family. In poor rural Indian communities there is no access to sanitation, water sources are contaminated and communities are at high risk of disease. Children are constantly sick and miss school. In these poor communities where every rupee counts, vital time at work is missed through poor health. The women, like Sreenidhi, put themselves in danger every night by going into the forest alone in the dark.

Last year, all of this changed for Sreenidhi and her family. Raleigh teams worked together with her community to build eco-sanitation toilets in the village. Sreenidhi told us:

"Having a toilet is very good because it make me feel clean. I have had no health problems since we started using them. I’m very thankful to Raleigh".

The humble toilet: agent of change

It costs just £260 to provide a family like Sreenhidhi’s with an eco-sanitation toilet. A toilet benefits the family in many ways:

• Reduction of illness and disease
• Fewer days missed off school from being ill
• Less time off work resulting in greater productivity
• Women and girls feeling safer as they no longer need to wait until dark to find somewhere private to relieve themselves
• Improved crop yields using the organic compost from the eco-sanitation toilets
• Income generated from the sale of the compost

You don’t have to be on an expedition to make a difference

In 2010 Raleigh teams worked with communities on eco-sanitation toilets, improving the health and lives of more than 300 people in rural Indian communities.

We want to do more.

Working with the communities, we are aiming for zero open defecation villages so that water is not contaminated. We aim to make a difference to the lives of over 1,000 people in rural Indian communities in 2012.

To do more, we need the support of our alumni, a special group of people who have seen firsthand the difference that our projects make to the lives of the local communities.

Any amount you can give will be greatly appreciated and will change the lives of families like Sreenidhi’s. Please give what you can.

There are a number of ways to give: