Shantipur and Phulia are two rural villages almost 80 km form the city of Kolkata in Bengal. The villagers here work day and night weaving sarees and other materials which are ultimately given to mahajans for trading. This leaves the villagers with very small income to take care of their basic needs. Hence the standard of living was very low in these communities. On top of this the drinking water in these villages gets sourced from handpumps. Initial investigation revealed that the source water had presence of Arsenic, and to surprise the villagers were drinking the same water without any purification process. This is where Planet Water India Foundation along with kind sponsorship penetrated this region, their AquaTower systems were upgraded to eliminate the harmful arsenic from the source water, and thus more than 15 villages in this area were benefited from the project. In 2018, Eileen Fisher partnered with Planet Water to fund 24 AquaTower and AquaHome systems in Phulia, West Bengal, India. This project provides clean water access to the communities of handloom weavers in Eileen Fisher’s artisanal supply chain that are in some of the most vulnerable populations. With Planet Water’s in-country staff installing the community-based water filtration system, the health and livelihoods of these workers will be protected and improved.

• Their systems were modified to eliminate harmful arsenic from the source water
• This project covered school students with their AquaTower system and villagers with their AquaHome system
• More than 15 villages were benefited from this project.
• All the beneficiaries were from lower income group working as weavers on daily wages.