Supporting Families and Children This Holiday Season
As 2022 comes to a close, we have been focusing on two important initiatives in the Tansa Valley in India: ensuring access to clean water and helping children thrive.
We are building community wells so women like those in Koshimshet who gather water for drinking, cooking, and cleaning every day for their families won’t have to spend hours walking in the hot sun carrying heavy water containers of 15 liters or more, often multiple times a day.
Through our Women’s Self-Help Groups, we are promoting affordable water filters so that families have clean drinking water right in their homes – taking away the health and financial burdens of waterborne illnesses for families like Anita Karpat’s in Lendipada.
Anita Karpat dispenses filtered water into a cup for her young son.
We know that when children thrive, the future is brighter for everyone. In addition to our nutrition program and school-based health camps, we are focused on providing the necessities that help families send children to school: shoes, hygiene kits, and school materials.
It may not be obvious, but shoes matter when you have to walk long distances on hot dirt roads with the dangers of sharp objects and parasites, like eight-year-old Aadesh.
Aadesh wears his new shoes provided by PRASAD Chikitsa’s “Happy Feet” initiative.
Hygiene kits matter because pride in self matters and school supplies matter because without them learning is that much more difficult. For most families in the rural villages of the Tansa Valley, these necessities are luxuries that they just cannot afford.
As the year comes to a close, we hope to raise $24,000 to ensure access to clean water – $14,000 to build two community wells serving 400 people in two villages and $10,000 to provide candle water filters to 500 families at $20 each – and $60,000 to provide 3,000 children with shoes, hygiene kits and school supplies at $20 per child for all three items.
Many thanks to those of you who have given already. For those of you still figuring out your year-end gifts, please consider supporting families and children this holiday season with a gift that will transform their lives.
Warm regards,
Dr. M. Cecilia Escarra
Executive Director
