Eco-sanitation, India
Wherever the Need (WTN) became a registered charity in 1998 and since the year 2000 has been actively involved in the provision of sanitation and drinking water to the poorest parts of Africa and India. In 2006, WTN wrote a strategy document committing the charity, where feasible, to constructing eco-sanitation toilets, providing, managing and conserving water, and encouraging tree planting programmes as part of a wider environmentally friendly programme.
This strategy has already seen its methodology for eco-sanitation toilets used in a document produced by the Tamil Nadu State Government in India and brought Ministerial acknowledgement in Sierra Leone. Through working with the needs and wishes of local people, projects can be straightforward and simple whilst having a long-term positive effect for communities and the environment.
India is a country of extremes: enormous mountains, cavernous valleys; lush tropical forests, parched deserts; extreme wealth, abject poverty; scorching heat, torrential rainfall; abundant food, devastating famine.
Despite the fact that India is experiencing tremendous growth as an industrialised society, it is estimated that at least 400 million people live on or below the poverty line. The majority of these people live in the hundreds of thousands of rural villages scattered around the sub-continent.
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