DESWOS, the German Development Assistance Association for Social Housing celebrated its 40th anniversary recently. Techem GmbH, a globally leading energy service provider for the real estate industry, once again sponsored a DESWOS project and supports the DESWOS anniversary project, by which 40 families in the Indian Nilgiris Mountains receive comprehensive assistance.

They belong to the 162 families of the Paniya tribe, who live at a height of 2,000 metres in a very isolated mountain area and need help. The people's houses are washed away by the monsoon rains every year. The poorest families are invariably the most severely affected, as they live in simple huts without water and power connection, and often in areas hardly fit for settlement. Therefore it makes sense to improve the construction of these simple houses so that they are able to withstand the torrential rain. In the 40th anniversary year of DESWOS, the housing industry's development assistance organisation is helping 40 families of the Paniya tribe to build more robust houses in a joint do-it-yourself effort.

Techem supports several Paniya villages with infrastructural community projects. For instance, wells are being built to ensure the supply of drinking water. The wells are equipped with pumps, filters and water tanks and connected to the houses with pipes laid above ground. "As an international energy service provider, we want to contribute to providing a little more justice in our world. To this end, we practise usage-bound billing as an incentive for economical use of the limited water resources. In this way, we save some 37 million cubic metres of water every year. But where there is no water or only polluted water, which is a health hazard, we want to help secure the regional drinking water supply. Therefore we supported a DESWOS water project in Tanzania last year, and for this year we have committed ourselves in India", Ulrich Fischer, Managing Director of Techem Energy Services International, describes Techem's environmental activities.

The donation from Techem also makes the installation of solar street and localised lighting possible. This is a great achievement, finally bringing light to the dark houses of people living far away from public power supply networks. This will also support the efforts of such people, above all children and adolescents, to acquire an education.