Blog Action Day / Stop using girls as infrastructure

Happy Blog Action Day! In honor of Blog Action Day, I want to resurrect a HuffingtonPost blog post from almost a year ago:

India Economic Summit Champions Investing in Girls

Among other action items, Maria Eitel suggests:

• Stop using girls as infrastructure. When we create proper infrastructures - build roads, install electricity and clean water - girls won't need to be used as infrastructure any longer. Today they function as the electric grid as they carry firewood, plumbing system as they carry water, childcare system, etc.

Couldn't agree more. Too often around the world women and girls are used as water (and all too often wastewater) infrastructure instead of being given the opportunity to be educated and become productive members of society.

Let's use Blog Action Day and its focus on water this year to stop using girls as infrastructure, and start giving them the opportunity to go to school, to learn, to be healthy, to be girls.

State of the Union / Barack Obama / Safe Water

It has been brought to our attention that President Obama has invited a fellow safe water advocate to Capitol Hill as his special guest this evening for the State of the Union address. That special guest is:

Li Boynton (Bellaire, Texas)

Li is an 18-year-old senior from Bellaire, Texas, whose passion for science and global health has led her to new and potentially groundbreaking methods for testing the quality of drinking water. Almost 1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and 3.5 million people die each year from water-related diseases. Observing the limitations and significant expense of conventional chemical-specific tests, Boynton saw a need for a broader, more efficient assay for testing and developed a bacteria bio-sensor. Li's work, which has the potential to be significant in improving public health worldwide, received the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair award for 2009.

Li has always had a passion for science and invention: in fifth grade, she designed a solar-distillation device after reading Life of Pi in case she ever got stranded in the middle of the ocean. Li is an avid painter and participates in high school debate, which is where she developed her environmental interests.

Great to see this issue is on the President's agenda.