Why Bolivia, and what we've built there

Bolivia has steadily expanded clean water access — about 78% of rural residents now have basic water service, up from much lower numbers a decade ago — but the gains haven't reached everywhere equally. The department of Potosí, on the southern Altiplano, sits among the country's three lowest-coverage regions. The terrain compounds the gap: low rainfall, high evaporation, and decades of mining activity have damaged local water sources, and recent drought has affected more than 42,000 families across 468 communities in Potosí alone. In 2018, we partnered with Compassion International to help.

Our Potosí project funded clean water storage tanks at two sites, paired with sanitation facilities at the same locations. The intervention served roughly 1,284 children and their families. Storage was the right shape for this region: where rainfall is unreliable and surface water is often contaminated by mining runoff, having clean, captured water on hand turns sporadic supply into a daily resource. Pairing it with sanitation closes the second half of the loop — clean water in, safe waste out.

"The first thing that changed in my life is hygiene and health, and now I will be protected from certain diseases. Now that we have a bathroom at the center, I can practice the good habits I have learned." — Silvia, a beneficiary at Nuevo Amanecer Student Center, Bolivia

Bolivia isn't one of our coffee origins, but every bag we sell from Uganda, Nicaragua, and our World Wonders microlots helps fund work like this.