YVO's renewed commitment: Enabling better water management

At YVO, we believe in solving problems in sustainable ways. While there are many causes in the universe that demand our intervention, we chose to focus on critical challenges that
underprivileged face like education, vocational training, availability of basic necessities like water for farmers and empowering women who are the backbone of every family. After a decade of impactful work in these areas and over 110 donations across these fields, team YVO contemplated on narrowing down the focus to a single cause: water management. 

The intent behind this is that by concentrating all our resources in one direction, we foresee making a deeper and a more significant, lasting difference in addressing that problem at grass root level.

Why water management?

Water is life, yet millions lack access to this basic necessity. India's water crisis is intensifying due to erratic monsoons, a burgeoning population, dwindling groundwater and lack of education on the infrastructural challenges in storing water. 

Here are some critical statistics:

• UNICEF reports that half of the world's population could face water scarcity by 2025. 

• 1.8 billion people in India lack household water, impacting every day life of women and children the most. 

• 25% of the global population lacks access to drinking water. • 35 million Indians lack safe water, and 678 million lack safe toilets. 

• India has 18% of the world's population but only 4% of its water resources. 

• Nearly 70% of India's water is contaminated. 

• By 2030, India's water demand will double the available supply.

Chosen region: Palghar, Maharashtra 

In Palghar, believe it or not, even today tribal women walk miles every day for fetching
water, which too is pretty unsafe in quality to consume. In Vidarbha, water scarcity still is the
primary root case of farmer suicides. We aim to try and solve the following challenges to
begin with: 

• Poor water conservation due to rugged terrain and topographical peculiarities.

•Dependency on a single river, Vaitarna, which also directs its majority supply to Mumbai. 

•Extreme water shortages by the month of January which forces women to travel far for fetching water. 

•Limited agricultural yield enforcing migration of bread winners to neighbouring towns or cities in search of work which disrupts their children's education.