"We come together, turning one man’s trash into treasure for an entire community. Each day is a new journey, a chance to make a difference."
- Reena, 22, Sundara Hygiene Education Ambassador
This Giving Tuesday, we ask you to join Sundara in our mission to provide soap - the most basic form of medicine - to India's most vulnerable youth and their families.
Why soap? Because every single day, 6000 children across the globe die from sanitation and hygiene related diseases such as diarrhea... that's well over 2 million children per year (Unicef). Many of these deaths could be prevented with access to soap used for daily, life-saving hand washing.
For the past five years, Sundara has intervened into the hospitality industry across the globe. We hire women who struggle to find employment to collect and recycle bars that have been used only one time by hotel guests, saving them before they are thrown into the trash. We give these bars an incredibly meaningful second life - distributing the new, recycled bars to thousands of children and families each day.
This method, combined with critical hand washing and hygiene education, is the most cost-effective health intervention available today. This Giving Tuesday, we are looking to our community, friends and family to help expand and enhance our soap recycling and hygiene promotion programs throughout Southern India, to scale our effectiveness and continue to decrease preventable deaths. Thank you so much for your support.
"Small Hands Making a Big Difference" is being spearheaded by a member of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation network and has been awarded a matching grant. Schusterman is a global organization that seeks to ignite the passion and unleash the power in young people to create positive change for themselves, the Jewish community and the broader world. Learn more about the Foundation here.
How will your donation impact our projects?
$500 - Make More Soap
Purchase a locally sourced and crafted soap recycling machine, enabling us to employ local village woodworkers and engineers. Each new machine allows Sundara to open additional soap recycling and hygiene education centers across India, leading to continued fair wage employment and empowerment in the community.
$250 - Bring Health to Those Who Need it the Most
Bring a year's worth of weekly soap deliveries and monthly hygiene educational programming to a village hospital, an urban medical clinic or an orphanage for children with disabilities.
$100 - A Month of a Lifetime
These funds will support a previously unemployed women to be enrolled in Sundara's month long hygiene training program and leadership classes. She will have access to a community of supportive women, be paired with a mentor and be eligible for full time employment afterwards. This will also give her a stipend to be used on health care, family care and nutrition.
$50 - 50 for 50 Students
Provide weekly soap deliveries and hygiene education lessons to a classroom of 50 students in Palghar or Ashte village. Each soap distribution is accompanied by our hygiene ambassadors with interactive games, movies and quizzes. Afterwards a healthy snack is served to each student. Your gift also allows for the classroom to have its own set of towels and supply of laundry detergent so children will be given the gift of clean hands every day they attend school.
