San Jose Partners

Gifts of Health:
The San Jose Partners Alternative Gift Shop

Want to improve a life with a birthday present?
Looking for the perfect gift for someone who has everything?

Look no further!

Gifts of Health provides you with the avenue to give, in the name of the recipient, a health-sustaining, life-saving intervention. In San Jose, Honduras, the people suffer from easily preventable diseases due to a lack of clean water, clean air and adequate sanitation. By choosing to “give” one of our many simple interventions as a present, you give the gift of health to a family in San Jose. What better gift is there?

Please select your favorite project from the list below. After payment, you will be emailed a card (within 24-48 hrs) which can be personalized and given to the recipient (Click here for an Example Gift Card).

Ventilated Cookstove

What will this improve?
Respiratory health, malnutrition, deforestation.

Complete or Chimney only: Complete Cookstove Chimney Only
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$45.00

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San Jose community members suffer disproportionately high rates of respiratory illnesses, including pneumonia, asthma and chronic bronchitis. The underlying cause? Smoke exposure secondary to the use of wood-fueled, open-pit fires inside enclosed kitchens. The cloud of smoke leaves the kitchen walls pitch black and the lungs of the women and children even blacker.

Ventilated cookstoves, with a chimney and enclosed burning chamber, eliminate this dangerous smoke from the kitchen. In addition, by burning firewood more efficiently, the ventilated stoves reduce firewood consumption by 50-60%. This “side-effect” in turn improves two other local problems: First, malnutrition is reduced as residents, mostly children, spend less time and calories collecting wood, and second, deforestation is slowed. As if that wasn’t enough, the improved cookstove also reduces the burn risk for children. Why not give one today?

Your gift provides a family with the metal cooking surface, ree-bar, bricks for the “door,” and chimney piping for constructing one cookstove.

Latrine

What will this improve?
Child health and mortality, parasites, malnutrition.

Full or Half: Full Latrine Half of Latrine
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$50.00

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Which invention in the history of man has saved the most lives? The humble latrine stands near or at the top of the list. As the linchpin component of the affectionately-named “fecal-oral cycle,” human feces is a dangerous vector for communicable disease. Parasites and diarrhea are two common outcomes of water, hands and food contaminated by feces. In San Jose, nearly all children carry intestinal parasites, worsening their current malnutrition. Meanwhile, residents average a day of diarrhea every three weeks, a disease burden that is especially dangerous for young children. Diarrhea is the second leading cause of death for children under five in Honduras.

Despite a clear desire, for economic reasons the majority of San Jose Residents still lack a latrine. In San Jose, we provide the non-local materials, residents supply natural resources and labor, and together we build Ventilated Improved Pit (VIP, no pun intended) Latrines. This design includes a chimney which makes the unit more user-friendly by reducing the foul odors and insects inside the latrine.

Your gift provides a family with the cement, PVC tube, ree-bar and roofing sheets for constructing 1 VIP Latrine.

Microfinance Loan

What will this improve?
Extreme poverty, women’s empowerment.

Amount of Loan: $10 $20 $30 $40 $50 $100
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$10.00

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There is no health in absolute poverty. Unfortunately, living on one dollar or less per day, absolute poverty is exactly where most San Jose Residents find themselves.

In order to foster economic development in San Jose, we have begun a program to finance and administer low-interest micro-loans. Although small, averaging $50, they provide local entrepreneurs the otherwise unavailable capital they need to begin their business. We preferentially fund ventures that will bring new capital to the community, such as raising chickens and selling the eggs at a distant market. Our strong relationship with the community, coupled with the use of social capital, has helped us achieve a zero percent default rate.

You gift provides the original capital for one micro-loan. Upon loan repayment, your gift is recycled and used again and again to fund more loans.

Potters for Peace In-Home Water Filter

What will this improve?
Child health and mortality, parasites, malnutrition.

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$25.00

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The Potters for Peace In-Home Water Filter (www.potterforpeace.org) consists of a ceramic filter, impregnated with a colloidal silver, that sits within a plastic receptacle. Produced in Honduras from local materials, the filter effectively removes 98-100% of bacteria and protozoal contamination. The result is clean, potable water. From a host of different water-cleaning technologies, the people of San Jose chose the Potters for Peace In-Home Water Filter as their favorite. Our goal is to have a filter in every house within 3 years.

Residents pay $2 to buy the filter, while your gift subsidizes the remaining cost of the filter.

Slow Sand Water Filter

What will this improve?
Child health and mortality, parasites, malnutrition.

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$35.00

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The Slow Sand Water Filter uses local, natural materials to produce clean, potable water. The filter is made simply by layering stone and sand inside a large plastic drum. After entering from the top, water passes through the layers which effectively remove 99-100% of all bacteria and protozoa. Due to their relatively high output, we can place a Slow Sand Water Filter at a local water source and provide clean water to a cluster of families with one filter. In addition, since they are entirely made of local materials, if something goes wrong with the filter, the community can simply disable and reassemble a new, functioning filter. In essence, they last forever!

Your gift provides the 50 gallon plastic barrel and PVC piping for one Slow Sand Water Filter.

Piped Water: 100m of PVC Lifeline

What will this improve?
Child health and mortality, parasites, malnutrition, quality of life, women’s empowerment.

Length: 10 meters 100 meters 1 kilometer
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$15.00

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The water distribution systems we help San Jose create harness water from protected natural springs, pipe it to a distribution tank to accommodate for changes in flow rate, and then pipe it to a spigot outside each household. Each project is entirely gravity-fed, with no pumps needed. While we provide the engineering knowledge and all materials, the community does every part of the construction, from digging the kilometers of trench to building the storage tank. For a resident of San Jose, water at the house is a dream come true.

The big question is how you get water from a distant spring, down a mountainside, and to a house. The answer is PVC pipe, laid carefully in hand-dug trenches. Our projects usually involve about 4 kilometers of pipe, bringing water to about 30 homes. PVC is the lifeline between our community members and life-giving water.

Piped Water: Water Valves for a Community Card

What will this improve?
Child health and mortality, parasites, malnutrition, quality of life, women’s empowerment.

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$60.00

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The water distribution systems we help San Jose create harness water from protected natural springs, pipe it to a distribution tank to accommodate for changes in flow rate, and then pipe it to a spigot outside each household. Each project is entirely gravity-fed, with now pumps needed. While we provide the engineering knowledge and all materials, the community does every part of the construction, from digging the kilometers of trench to building the storage tank. For a resident of San Jose, water at the house is a dream come true.

When you arrive at a house that is the recipient of a newly-installed water distribution system, the family lights up with pride as they open their new spigot and show you the flowing water. The spigot represents the end point of much hard work, and a huge leap forward in the health, nutrition, and quality of life of the family. The spigot is the finishing touch on a community’s dream.

Your gift provides a metal spigot for each of the 30 houses receiving piped water.

Piped Water: Ferro-Cement Water Tank

What will this improve?
Child health and mortality, parasites, malnutrition, quality of life, women’s empowerment.

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$1,300.00

More Details

The water distribution systems we help San Jose create harness water from protected natural springs, pipe it to a distribution tank to accommodate for changes in flow rate, and then pipe it to a spigot outside each household. Each project is entirely gravity-fed, with now pumps needed. While we provide the engineering knowledge and all materials, the community does every part of the construction, from digging the kilometers of trench to building the storage tank. For a resident of San Jose, water at the house is a dream come true.

Ferro-Cement Water Tanks use the careful application of thin layers of concrete to create a 4500 gallon water storage facility, at half the cost of a traditional cement-block tank. For a water distribution system, the tank is the lynch-pin that accommodates for changes in flow rate. Also, we construct ferro-cement water tanks at houses that can’t receive piped water, because they are uphill from a source. By storing rainwater, a ferro-cement tank can provide a family with a close source of clean water for the entire dry season.

Your gift provides the concrete, chicken wire, barbed wire, ree-bare and piping for one Ferro-Cement Water Tank. The community provides all the natural resources and the labor.

Piped Water: Water for a Community

What will this improve?
Child health and mortality, parasites, malnutrition, quality of life, women’s empowerment.

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$10,000.00

More Details

The water distribution systems we help San Jose create harness water from protected natural springs, pipe it to a distribution tank to accommodate for changes in flow rate, and then pipe it to a spigot outside each household. Each project is entirely gravity-fed, with now pumps needed. While we provide the engineering knowledge and all materials, the community does every part of the construction, from digging the kilometers of trench to building the storage tank. For a resident of San Jose, water at the house is a dream come true.


Water is life. Water in the home improves sanitation, reduces water-borne illness, decreases malnutrition, frees time for child-rearing and immeasurably improves one’s quality of life. Is your group looking for a fundraising goal? Do you want to entirely improve the lives of 150 people? The gift of water is yours to give.

Your gift covers all the material costs of a water project for 30 families. This includes 4km of PVC piping, all the materials of a Ferro-Cement Water Distribution Tank, and plumbing components up to the spigot outside each house. In return for the materials, the community performs all the labor.

Alternatively, please contact us for more information on how to make your gift a reality.

Thank You for shopping:

The San Jose Partners Alternative Gift Shop

We are proud to say that 100% of your contribution goes directly into the community in the form of materials. Volunteers pay their own travel expenses, administrators donate their time and all office and maintenance overhead is covered pro-bono.

While we try our best to direct funds to the project for which they were donated, we reserve the right to redistribute funds to different projects based upon the current needs in San Jose.