What would you do with an extra three hours every day?

For most of us, three hours feels like a luxury—time to learn a new skill, spend with family, or pursue a passion. But for millions of people across rural India, three hours isn’t extra time. It’s the time they spend every single day just trying to find clean water.

At Community Pure Water, we see this reality daily across our work in rural India. Before our water purification centers arrive in villages and schools, families—particularly women and girls—walk for hours to collect water that isn’t even safe to drink.

The Hidden Cost of Water Collection

Picture this: A 12-year-old girl in a village in Telangana wakes up at 5 AM. Instead of getting ready for school, she walks two hours to the nearest borewell, waits in line for another hour, then walks two hours back home carrying heavy containers of water that may be contaminated with fluoride, bacteria, or other harmful substances.

Those five hours? They could have been spent in a classroom learning mathematics. Playing with friends. Helping her parents with other tasks. Dreaming about her future.

This isn’t just one child’s story—it’s the daily reality for countless families across the six states where we work. 

Globally, women and girls lose 200 million hours every day collecting water, according to UNICEF.

When Clean Water Comes Close to Home

Everything changes when we install a water purification center in a village or school.

Take Anita, a mother of three in Maharashtra, whose life transformed when CPW installed a water purification center in her village, Kasod Shivpur. “Before, my daughters would miss school twice a week to help collect water,” she tells us. “Now we get fresh, clean water just 200 meters from our home. My daughters are top students in their class, and I’ve started a small tiffins business with the time I’ve saved.”

Or consider Mahesh, a 14-year-old boy in Uttar Pradesh, who now spends his mornings studying instead of walking to distant wells. “I want to become an engineer,” he says, filling his bottle from the water center installed in his school. “Now I have time to focus on my studies instead of worrying about water.”

These aren’t just individual success stories—they’re multiplied across 550+ water purification centers serving over 1.1 million people every day.

The Ripple Effects of Time

When families no longer spend hours collecting water, the impacts ripple throughout entire communities:

Education Flourishes: Children, especially girls, attend school regularly. Teachers report better concentration and performance when students aren’t tired from early morning water collection or worried about their families’ water needs. 

Economic Opportunities Emerge: Women use their newly available time to start small businesses, learn new skills, or take on income-generating activities. The hours once spent walking become hours spent learning or earning.

Health Improves: Families not only save time—they also avoid the health risks of contaminated water. Children who once suffered from waterborne illnesses now stay healthy and in school.

Dreams Take Shape: Perhaps most importantly, when basic needs are met efficiently, people have the mental and physical space to dream bigger. Students aspire to higher education. Parents plan for their children’s futures. Communities envision new possibilities.

The Mathematics of Impact

At less than 35 paise (half a cent) per liter, our water purification centers don’t just provide clean water—they give families the gift of time. Consider the mathematics:

• 3 hours saved per day per family
• 1,095 hours saved per year
• Across 1.1 million people served daily
• That’s millions of hours returned to communities for education, economic development, and family life

Those hours transform into educational achievements, business ventures, stronger family bonds, and community development initiatives that wouldn’t have been possible when everyone was focused on the daily struggle for water.

What Would You Do With Extra Time?

When we ask the families we serve what they do with the time they’ve saved, their answers are as diverse as they are inspiring:

Priya, a 16-year-old in Andhra Pradesh, uses her extra time to prepare for competitive exams. “I want to study medicine in Hyderabad to become a nurse,” she says. “Now I can focus on my dreams instead of water collection.”

Navjot, a grandfather in Punjab, started a small farming cooperative with other men in his village. “When we’re not spending our mornings fetching water, we can focus on improving our agricultural techniques and planning our crops better.”

Manjula, a mother in Telangana, learned to operate a sewing machine and now runs a successful tailoring business from her home. “The three hours I save every day, I invest in my skills and my family’s future.”

The Multiplier Effect

Our water purification centers do more than save time—they multiply possibilities. When a village school has reliable clean water, attendance improves. When families have time for economic activities, household incomes rise. When children aren’t burdened with water collection, they pursue education and dreams that seemed impossible before.

This is why our Install, Operate, Maintain model focuses on sustainability. We don’t just want to save time for a few months—we want to give communities permanent access to both purified water and the precious hours that come with it.

Time is the Ultimate Equality

Water isn’t just about health—it’s about time. And time, unlike water, is something we all get equally. Twenty-four hours in a day for everyone. The difference is how those hours can be used.

When clean water is available just steps away from home, those hours transform from survival tasks into opportunities for growth, learning, and building better futures.

Across the states of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab, we’re not just purifying water—we’re liberating time. Every water purification center we install gives entire communities the gift of extra hours that can be invested in education, economic development, and dreams.What would you do with an extra three hours every day? For the 1.1 million people we serve, that question is no longer hypothetical—it’s a daily reality filled with possibilities.