Oneprosper International

The problem

In India's Thar Desert, more than half of girls don't know how to read and write. Instead of going to school, they spend up to seven hours a day collecting water for their families.

Coronavirus gravely exacerbates the situation.  The research is clear: in times of distress, it is women and girls who are most at risk. Previous pandemics such as SARS, swine flu, bird flu, and Ebola have borne out the truth that economic distortions set back gender equality in the long-term, with implications that long outlast the pandemic itself.

In the Thar Desert, it is easy to see why that could be the case. To slow the spread of coronavirus, India has imposed a nation-wide lockdown that prohibits people from leaving their homes. However, no family can survive long without water, and collecting water is a woman's job in the Thar Desert.

Short-term implications:
1.  Women and girls walk in large groups to collect water from ponds. Large groups are required for their safety. Thus women and girls are unable to carry out social isolation and face greater risk of infection.
2. Women who are working are forced to drop out of the workforce to care for any infected family members and to manage household chores, for which they bear primary responsibility. Household work increased dramatically during ties of isolation, since entire joint families live in a single dwelling.

Long-term implications:
1. Girls are forced to drop out of school as family income and savings decline. In this region, a boy's education is prioritized over a girl's.
2. Families do not have the means to invest in wells or other infrastructure to free up girls' time from gathering water. As a result, a girl does not have scope to break out of an intergenerational cycle of poverty.

Our holistic solution

OneProsper provides a holistic solutions to families with at least two girl children in the Thar Dessert:
1. We give her time. We build a rainwater harvesting tank near the family's dwelling.
2. We provide clean water. We provide families with a 7-layer biosand filter to turn harvested rainwater into clean, potable water.
3. We show her respect. We inscribe each tank with the mother's name to show her daughters that women are important.
4. We ensure nutrition. We provide seeds and farm training so the family can grow local fruits and vegetables.
5. We provide school supplies. We pay for the daughters' tuition, school supplies, and uniform.
6. We provide transportation. We give each girl a bicycle to cover the distance to school.
7. We grow family incomes. We build farming dykes across the family's field, enabling them to leverage the harvested rainwater to double crop yields.

We deliver the solution only to families with girls in the Thar Desert. The complete family solution is delivered for $1700, in a one-time investment designed to be self-sustaining.

Our results
OneProsper has sponsored a total of 130 families in the Thar Desert to date (30 families in 2018, 50 families in 2019, and 50 families in 2020).

With your help, we can ensure continued support for more families during this time of crisis and avert long-lasting setbacks for women.

100% of donations goes toward supporting families. Please join us in our mission to create a more gender-equal and educated world.

Please visit our website to learn more about our work to empower the women of the Thar Desert