Water

It’s easy to take water for granted. Most of us are never more than a few feet from the nearest tap, and we think nothing of our ability to fill a full kettle whenever we fancy a good cuppa. Unfortunately, access to decent water isn’t universal. According to the United Nations (UN) 884 million people still struggle to find fresh water. Including people living in India, Kenya and Rwanda.

We work with farming communities in all three of these countries, so we know just how tough the struggle can be. In Rwanda, smallholders often face a 4km (40 minute) trek to the nearest water source, and they have to fetch water twice a day. That’s at least 2 hours of continuous walking — just to get something to drink. 

Water in Rwanda isn’t always clean either. It’s normally drawn from communal pumps that supply up to 100,000 homes, and it’s often too contaminated with dangerous bacteria. Sadly, the same is true of water in Assam, Kenya and Guatemala too. 

Improving access to fresh water

Water is a top priority for us. We know that dirty water threatens the health of our suppliers. We also know that communities without clean water really struggle to thrive. That’s why we’re working hard to make sure that everyone involved in our supply chain enjoys access to decent water. 

To achieve this, we contribute to several water projects in Kenya, Rwanda, Guatemala and Assam. Most of these projects take a long-term approach. They help local communities to build crucial infrastructure, and there’s a real focus on empowering people through education too. In Kenya, we’ve helped schools to build rainwater collection tanks, which will provide supplementary drinking water in times of drought. 

We’ve also teamed up with the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KDTA) to fund fresh water pipelines in several regions. These pipelines reduce the risk of disease, and provide safe drinking water to thousands of homes. They also cut down on the amount of time that women and children spend travelling for water, which is a really important consideration.

Empowering women and children

In many communities, responsibility for gathering water normally falls to women and children. Unfortunately, this means that children have to skip school so they can trek to the nearest water source; depriving them of an education and limiting their opportunities for future growth. 

Women really suffer in water deprived communities too. The work they put gathering and purifying water can take up half of their day, and that means they have less time to learn new skills, or find a job to supplement their income. 

By improving access to fresh water, we hope to free up time that can be spent in the classroom, running a home business or generally improving the lives of tea farmers all over the world. 

We’ve worked on some big projects too. Back in 2016, we contributed £22,000 to the construction of a small dam in Sosiot, Kenya. This dam provides clean drinking water to 600 homes. Building it also gave us a great opportunity to engage with the local community; teaching them about the importance of water conservation, and helping them to plant trees capable of fighting soil erosion in the local area. 

Working together, we believe that we can improve access to fresh water and help our suppliers to future-proof their enterprises at the same time. Building a better, brighter future for everyone in our supply chain. 

A global initiative

Further afield, we’ve brought fresh water to approximately 2,000 people in Rwanda. We achieved this by teaming up with estate owners, and building gravity-fed pipelines to four different villages. These pipelines don’t require expensive pumps, which means they’re cheap to run and easy to maintain. They also bring water right into the heart of the community — removing the need to trek several kilometers for a bucket of water.

We’ve taken a different approach in Assam though. Here, estate owners are responsible for providing access to basic amenities, and the law dictates that every farmer should have access to clean water. Unfortunately, access to clean water varies by estate, and many smallholders lack access to basic sanitation too. 

We tackled this problem by teaming up with estate owners, and creating four community development forums (CDFs). These forums work like miniature parliaments. They are made up of 40 – 50 democratically elected members — representing a complete cross-section of the estate community — and they meet to discuss issues that affect everyone from managers, right through to the non-working family members that live on the estate. 

These CDFs have been instrumental in tackling water access issues. They’ve helped to give workers a voice, and they’ve already set to work building toilets and other sanitary facilities. On one estate, the local CDF has even implemented a sanitary pad scheme, which aims to provide affordable women’s health products to everyone involved in the enterprise. 

Over time, we hope that CDFs will help to improve basic amenities for workers across the region. In the meantime, we’ll support them wherever we can. Back in 2016, we helped Indian farmers buy home filtration systems to purify their water, and we’ll always be looking for more opportunities to lend a hand. So far our water projects have improved 13,000 lives, and they’ve also helped us to build closer relationships with the people who grow our tea and coffee. 

And we couldn’t invest in any of them without the help of our customers.