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The KAWAD project has helped Goodamma save money, secure a reliable supply of food, given her access to affordable loans through her SHG, and a site on which she can construct her own house.

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The Chennai Rain Centre, the first of its kind in the country, is a one-stop information and assistance center on rainwater harvesting.

This report published by the Asia Development Bank includes a case study that attempts to understand the potential of watershed development in addressing the issues of poverty alleviation. The important issues in this regard include:

• Assessing the linkages between watershed development and rural livelihoods & poverty,
• Type and nature of benefit flows accruing to various sections of the community
• Challenges in making the watershed programme pro-poor and sustaining it in the long run.

 This report found on the World Health Organisation site has been brought out by the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation, that tracks the progress on target 10 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which is "To halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation".

2008 being the International Year of Sanitation, the report highlights the importance of sanitation, as being the crucial stepping stone to health , which offers:

This report includes the findings of a study by the Planning Commission sponsored by the World Health Organisation and The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) that conducted an assessment of the water and sanitation situation in India in 2002. The assessment revealed that:

This article on the Planning Commission site presents a review of the government figures regarding coverage of all rural habitations in the country with good drinking water supply.

This is a case study from Peoples Learning Center for drinking water and sanitation being run by Utthan in Bhavnagar district of Gujarat

Not only money, villagers need knowledge too!
Surekha Sule

"We have been drinking brackish water not knowing that it is not water but poison that we have been consuming all these years till Utthan's PLC visited us and made us aware of our drinking water problem. Till then we took it in our stride all the water related problems – our children fell sick, most of us suffered from joint pain (due to high fluoride content in water)"
- Bhagwanbhai from village Boda (Bhavnagar district)

To measure how fast water percolates into the soil, you need to measure the time it takes for a specific amount of water to soak into a specific area of soil. The easiest way to do this is to get a length of cylindrical pipe that is sharp enough to push (or hammer) into the soil at one end. Mark it with two lines – one is the line to which you insert it into the soil, and the other is the line to which you fill the water.

You can measure slope by making use of gravity. Find a protractor for measuring angles. Attach a straw across the straight edge of the protractor.