Better Water: Clean Drinking Water for 40 Farming Families in Huila
When you imagine a coffee farm in the mountains of Colombia, you might picture abundant water. Streams, springs, rain. The reality is different.
Deforestation, climate change, livestock runoff, and unregulated agrochemical use have damaged or dried up water sources across coffee-growing regions. Families end up drinking what’s available, often without knowing what’s in it. The result is what you’d expect: gastrointestinal illness affecting children, adults, and elders alike. It is a daily problem with daily consequences.
What This Project Is
Better Water is a clean water initiative built through our partnership with Terra Coffee and Mastercol, the team that exports the Santa Ana producer group’s coffee to us. Through our continued purchases from Santa Ana, we reached the level of collaboration that made this project possible.
Together, we delivered 40 Ekofil water filters to coffee-farming households in Huila, Colombia. One filter was placed at the San Isidro Educational Institution’s Santa Ana campus, so the community’s children have safe drinking water at school too.
How the Filter Works
The Ekofil filter draws on something old. Indigenous communities have used clay and stone for centuries to purify turbid water, and this filter uses the same principle through modern microfiltration. No chemicals. No complex installation. No electricity.
Each filter gives a family access to roughly 30,000 liters of clean water before the tank needs replacing, which happens about every three years. Monthly cleaning is the only maintenance. For families who have spent years boiling water or going without, this is a quiet but real shift in daily life.
Why It Matters Beyond the Filter
Clean water changes more than hydration. It changes how families cook, how children grow, how often someone misses work or school because they are sick. It reduces the need for single-use plastic bottles in communities that already carry the environmental weight of producing the coffee we drink.
The project aligns with three UN Sustainable Development Goals: Good Health and Well-Being, Clean Water and Sanitation, and Life on Land. Beyond the filter delivery, the program included training workshops on installation and hygiene, water sample analysis before and after filtration, and a tree-planting marathon with the community.
A Thank-You from Santa Ana
“On behalf of the San Isidro Educational Institution, we would like to thank Sum>One and Terra Coffee for the donation of the water filter for the Santa Ana campus. Thank you very much!”
This project exists because of the quality of the coffee these farmers grow, the trust built across the supply chain, and the shared belief that a coffee relationship should mean something on both ends of it.
Every bag of Santa Ana coffee carries this story now. Clean water for 40 families. A school with a filter at the front of the classroom. A reminder that the people who grow our coffee deserve to be cared for the way they care for the land.
This is what collaboration tastes like.
