Why Brazil, and what we've built there

Brazil has plenty of water on a national scale — but it isn't distributed equally. Of Brazil's 211 million people, about 24 million still lack access to safe water, and the gap concentrates sharply in the rural Northeast. Roughly one in three rural Brazilians lives without basic water and sanitation services, and the Northeast has the country's lowest coverage of both. The state of Ceará — where our project is — sits inside what Brazilians call the polygon of drought, a roughly one-million-square-kilometer semi-arid strip with annual rainfall below 500 mm and a centuries-long history of severe droughts. During the 2012–2018 drought, more than half of Ceará's municipalities saw water supply disruptions, and a substantial share of the state's monitored reservoirs ran completely dry. In 2023, we partnered with Compassion International to help one of those communities.

Our project in Ubajara funded a borehole, home filtration kits, and training in water management, sanitation, and hygiene. The combination matters: a borehole reaches groundwater that surface drought can't touch; filtration kits make sure what comes out of it is safe at the point of use; and the training keeps both running long after our team is gone. It's the kind of layered approach the region needs — drought-resilient supply paired with skills that stay in the community.

"Today I have a greater awareness of the benefits of using a filter to purify water and avoid diseases caused by tap water." — Davi, age 10, Ubajara, Brazil

Brazil has shown up as one of our coffee origins in the past, specifically one of our featured World Wonders roasts. Keep an eye out for more Brazilian coffee in the future! Until then, every bag we sell from Uganda, Nicaragua, and our World Wonders microlots helps fund work like this.