Household toilets provide dignity and privacy to people in rural villages as well as curb the outbreak of disease.

NEW ROCHELLE, NY (March 30, 2020) Salesian missionaries with the Institution for Cultural and Rural Development (I-CARD) based at Jorhat, Assam, India, built individual household toilets thanks to funding from Salesian Missions “Clean Water Initiative.” The project took place in 2018 and impacted 35 households in the villages of Bormukali and Dergaon.

The toilets were made in accordance with India’s government regulations and with materials prescribed precisely for this purpose. While the families have been provided household toilets, there is no water supply to these toilets. They have to carry in buckets from the hand pumps they already have in the villages. There is a bucket inside each toilet so that water can be stored for an emergency.

“We would like to extend our sincere appreciation to Salesian Missions on behalf of the tribal community impacted by this project,” said Father K.A. Thomas, the director of I-CARD. “Before the project, these families practiced open defecation. With the dwindling forest areas and the increase in the number of households, people were facing immense problems. There were times when people suffered from diarrhea and dysentery. Now with funding from Salesian Missions, people have been given dignity and privacy and a sense of self-worth.”

With more than 1.3 billion people, India’s growing population is putting a severe strain on the country’s natural resources. According to Water.org, close to 77 million people do not have access to safe, clean water and 769 million have no sanitation services. Most water sources throughout the country are contaminated by sewage and agricultural runoff.

While India has made some progress in the supply of safe water, there remain gross disparities in safe water access across the country. The World Bank estimates that 21 percent of communicable diseases in India are related to unsafe water with diarrhea alone causing more than 1,600 deaths daily. Access to proper sanitation is extremely poor, particularly in rural areas where only 14 percent of the population has access to a latrine.

In response to this crisis, Salesian Missions has developed a “Clean Water Initiative” that has made building wells and supplying fresh, clean water a top priority for every community in every country in which Salesian missionaries work.

India has the world’s fourth largest economy but more than 22 percent of the country lives in poverty. About 31 percent of the world’s multidimensionally poor children live in India, according to a report by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. A multidimensionally poor child is one who lacks at least one-third of 10 indicators, grouped into three dimensions of poverty: health, education and standard of living.

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