✔ Scan Verified - KAMLOOPS Water Bottle
YOU MADE A BIG IMPACT
Register Your BottleThis Is What You Helped Fund
You scanned a code on the bottom of your KAMLOOPS. It brought you here, to 11 villages on the edge of the Thar Desert in Pakistan, and to the water that used to make people there sick.
Scroll this page and learn more about these villages, communities, and the people who live there, and discover how you’re helping change lives.
2256
Lives Changed
350
Water Filters Provided
37
Latrines Installed
THE PROBLEM
Why Your Help
is Needed
In eleven villages on the edge of Pakistan's Thar Desert, the only water available comes from irrigation canals: muddy, contaminated, and shared with crops and cattle. It's the water families drink, cook with, and give to their infants, and it's making them sick. Contaminated water is the leading cause of illness here, driving typhoid, cholera, and stunted growth, and claiming the lives of children and the elderly.
THE SOLUTION
The Difference
You Made
A GROSCHE biosand water filter in every home changes that. Families take the same water they've always had and pass it through their filter, turning it into safe water for drinking, cooking, and feeding infants. Many take such pride in their filter that they build shaded shelters around it by hand, using mud and straw, so that even in temperatures above 50°C, their family has cool, safe water close to home.
Life in the Thar Desert
Along the Thar Desert's border, eleven villages turn scarcity into strength. Life here runs on canal water, animal care, and generations of grit, with sweet, simple pleasures along the way.
The Land
Along the border where the Thar Desert stretches from western India into southeastern Pakistan, eleven small village communities have built their lives on the edge of the sand. They cluster around seasonal canals carrying rainwater and tributaries from the Indus River, the lifeline that makes anything grow in one of the harshest, driest landscapes on earth. Temperatures routinely climb past 50°C, and groundwater is scarce; simple wells aren't an option here. Everything depends on what the canals bring.
The Work
Families here farm and make bricks by hand, working daily-wage jobs that pay $1 to $3 a day, when work is available. It's seasonal, physical labor, and income stops the moment the work does. There's no safety net between one wage and the next, just the same resourcefulness that's kept these communities going for generations.
The Home
Most families keep buffalo, goats, and chickens, and daily life is built around them: milk and eggs each morning, homemade yogurt, butter, and cream. In summer, a cold lassi (yogurt, water, and cane sugar) is a small, well-earned pleasure. It's a home life rich in self-reliance, shaped by the animals and land that sustain it.
How Our Biosand Water Filter Works
No electricity. No replacement cartridges. No running costs.
Each filter will provide a family of ten with clean water for up to 30 years!
BEYOND THE FILTERS
Clean Water Was Just the Beginning
Your purchase did more than just provide the water filters that make safe drinking water a reality. You helped fund mulitple projects throughout these 11 villages that work to solve the challenges and risks that come with everyday life here.
Latrines and Sanitation
THE PROBLEM
A Basic Need,
A Daily Risk
Women in these communities face daily safety risks from open defecation. Many avoid the fields during the day to avoid being exposed, and instead travel in groups late at night, when there's no electricity and the region is plunged into complete darkness. Candles are unaffordable, so after dark, any trip between homes or across the village can mean encounters with wildlife or strangers. Open defecation is also a major source of E.coli and other bacterial infections, which puts children and families at risk. Without secure latrines, water for sanitation and basic light, these communities face ongoing threats to their personal safety and public health.
THE SOLUTION
Building Dignity, One Latrine at a Time
These simple, community-built latrines improve health, safety and hygiene, especially with GROSCHE water filters nearby for handwashing. We source materials and involve community members in construction, which builds a sense of ownership and teaches residents to maintain the facilities. The result is near 100% utilization. Every family also received a portable solar lamp, which can only be found in a major city and would otherwise be out of reach. The lamps charge fully in the daytime sun, so women and children can move around safely at night, and kids can do their schoolwork at home. What many of us take for granted, like a safe bathroom or a light after dark, is still out of reach for many people. Funding these projects helps close that gap.
Hand Pumps
THE PROBLEM
A Long Walk to Contaminated Water
Gathering water from distant sources was a daily burden. It took time and energy, and often put people's safety at risk. Even after that journey, the water they carried home was unsafe. It came from nearby streams and carried the same contamination found in all the water available to them.
THE SOLUTION
Closer Access, Then Clean Water
We installed two hand pumps so people no longer had to make the long trek for water, giving the community direct access to nearby streams. But having water closer doesn't make it safe, so we paired the pumps with water filters in the villages to treat what came out of them. A nearer but still-contaminated source became water that's actually safe to drink.
How It All Began
THE REASON
An Issue That Hits Close to Home
In 2005, our 10-month-old daughter contracted cholera from contaminated water, and for a few days, we thought we might lose her. She recovered, but that experience changed us for good: we couldn't stop thinking about the families who face that same fear every day, with no other choice but unsafe water. That's why we built the Safe Water Project directly into how we do business. Every GROSCHE product purchased helps provide over 50 days of safe drinking water to someone in need.
