Botstiber Foundation | Austrian-American Studies | Wildlife Fertility Control | Water Projects
Our Mission
Botstiber Water Projects is committed to preventing human suffering by expanding access to safe, reliable water in rural Laos through sustainable, community-based partnerships. Building on more than 20 years of work across Southeast Asia, we focus on improving access to safe, reliable water in rural northern Laos, where rugged terrain, remote villages, climate pressures, and limited infrastructure make access especially challenging.
Why Water Matters
In many rural communities in northern Laos, women and children spend much of each day collecting water from streams and rivers that are unsafe or difficult to access. We believe that reliable access to safe water changes lives. It improves health, gives children more time to attend school, and helps build stronger, more resilient communities. That is why we work alongside our partners in Laos to develop sustainable, community-led water systems that provide safe, reliable water for generations to come. Water changes everything.
Our Stories
The Face of Laos: An Instant Film Story
In every village we visited across Laos, we did the same thing: took two instant photos of every person we met. One stayed with them. Often the only photograph they've ever owned. One came home with us. Faces of Laos is a travel journal through ten remote villages, told one portrait at a time. These are the farmers, weavers, beekeepers, mothers, elders, and kids we met along the way, and the stories behind their faces. Shot entirely on instant film. 📷 Follow the journal: instagram.com/facesoflaos 🎞 New portraits and stories posted weekly
Water Can Educate
Open the Spigot-Delivering Clean Water in Laos
Water Can Change Anything
How Water Transformed a Village in Laos – The Story of Seankham Neua
It Takes a Village to Bring Water Home
Faces of Laos
We traveled to twelve villages with instant cameras. We handed each person their portrait – perhaps the first photograph they had ever held of themselves. Then we asked: What would water mean to you? The answers changed everything about how we tell this story.
Former Projects in SE Asia
Myanmar
In 2006, VillageHaus, a program of the Botstiber Water Projects, began an eight-year collaboration with CARE Myanmar supporting projects that improved food security and public health in poor villages in Lashio Township in northern Shan State. VillageHaus focused on 24 villages over 8 years providing water, both for health and for food security, improved sanitation and health education, a major investment in improved agricultural techniques, and a continuous emphasis on organizing villagers into community based groups to manage each aspect of these programs.
Indonesia
On December 26, 2004, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake off the tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra triggered a tsunami that caused devastation extending from Indonesia and Thailand across the Indian Ocean to India, Sri Lanka and beyond. Nearly immediately after the tsunami, VillageHaus identified and funded an Indonesian NGO which had been an early responder to the disaster.
Thailand
50 years of civil war led to over a million refugees fleeing Myanmar for Thailand. Many of those refugees received medical care from the Mae Tao Clinic, organized and directed by a Burmese refugee who had fled the Burmese government crackdown on the democracy movement in 1988. Beginning in 2006, Botstiber Water Projects supported the Clinic’s work.
Contact Us to Learn More About Our Work
Molly Coulter
Program Manager, Botstiber Water Projects
Botstiber Foundation
mcoulter@botstiber.org