Member Profile: Crabgrass

Crabgrass in a small NGO working locally and globally on environmental, social change, and human rights issues. For many years our activities and writing have brought together scientific, strategic, spiritual, educational and artistic efforts to address the issue of water.

Crabgrass has been working for 25 years with the Sankat Mochan Foundation in Varanasi, India to address the issue of pollution of the Ganges River. The ultimate goal of the campaign there is to have zero discharge of pollutants into the river. This work led us to convene a Women and Water conference in Varanasi in 1996. Our second international Women and Water conference was held in Kathmandu, Nepal in 1998. Working together with Vandana Shiva's organization Navdanya, we organized a third international conference, held in Dehradun, India in 2005. Through these international conferences, we have created partnerships with women from the West and local women who are seeking clean water for their families and communities. We continue to raise awareness about the crucial role of water in the world, and women's unique relationship to it. .

Crabgrass joined together with A Single Drop, GROOTS Kenya, and Women's Earth Alliance to organize the African Women and Water conference, held at the Green Belt Movement Training center in the suburbs of Nairobi, Kenya in June/July 2008. We are committed to continue pursuing the goals of the African conference: to equip African women in local leadership positions to gain access to safe water technologies, to build capacity and vocational skills, and to support the creation of manageable community solutions to ensure sustainable access to clean water.

Crabgrass was incorporated in 1985-86. Our work has been wide-ranging. Based on an assessment of the needs of the world, our sustained relationships, and informed intuition, Crabgrass uses creative resourcefulness to provide timely technical, financial, moral, and networking support to women (and men) from areas of political oppression who lead their communities toward environmental and social justice through non-violent means. Crabgrass has four program areas:(1) water work - primarily with the Sankat Mochan Foundation in Varanasi, India, and our work in organizing women and water conferences.(2) Women and Self-Determination work - during the 1990's we visited the Balkan region and offered our support to women there as they struggle to build new lives for themselves and their countries. We've also worked with Afghan and Armenian women. (3) Reconciliation work - we took young adults from the Balkans to South Africa in 2001 to learn firsthand how reconciliation is being realized there, to give them ideas on how to work for ethnic tolerance in the Balkans. (4) public education and training - we take what we are learning from our international work, package it, and put it out in our newsletter, talks, workshops, and other public events.