WASH United has just relaunched their website in time for the World Cup!
Please join the coalition, and help them get the word out...
WASH United, united for WASH
WASH United is a unique coalition of international and African civil society organizations, United Nations agencies, governments and leading actors from the world of football. Together, we harness the power of sport to promote safe drinking WAter, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) for all people, everywhere.
But WASH United is much more than just a project. WASH United is a Club.
Anyone in the world – ordinary people, political decision makers, organizations and of course YOU – can join our Club and become a Champion for WASH, side by side with the world’s biggest football stars like Didier Drogba, Nwankwo Kanu or Stephen Appiah!
Every new member makes our voice stronger and brings us one step closer to turning our shared vision of every person enjoying their human right to safe drinking water and sanitation into reality.
Where is WASH United active?
In the campaign leading up to the 2010 World Cup, WASH United focuses on promoting safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene for all in eight countries in Sub-Saharan Africa: Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Mali, Lesotho, Uganda and Tanzania.
In addition to activities in the WASH United target countries, there are also targeted activities taking place in Europe to raise awareness for the importance of water and sanitation among the general public and political decision makers.
Who we want to reach?
WASH United’s activities in Sub-Saharan Africa target a different constituencies. Our activities in schools, youth football clubs and local communities, aim to promote safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene among children, adolescents and families. WASH United advocacy activities at the national and international level aim to influence political decision makers, relevant governing bodies, civil society organisations and the media.
In Europe, WASH United aims to reach political decision makers to ensure that access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene are prioritised in development cooperation, and that the right to water and sanitation is promoted within all development activities. In addition, our activities are designed to raise awareness among the general public and the media.
Project partners
WASH United is supported by a broad range of international partners, including international and African civil society organizations, United Nations agencies, governments and leading actors from the world of football. It is is hosted by the German NGO Brot für die Welt.
In the target countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, WASH United works with and through project partners’ country offices, WASH networks and local partner organizations (both non-governmental and governmental) to implement WASH United activities on the ground.
Donors
WASH United would like to thank the German Federal Foreign Office, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) for their generous financial support.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Enough is not enough: it must also be clean
VERY nice piece in the Economist on water, sanitation, and developing countries. Now we just need to get that cover story in TIME or Newsweek.
Enough is not enough: it must also be clean
May 20, 2010
IF WATER has the capacity to enhance life, its absence has the capacity to make it miserable. David Gray, a water practitioner who has served the World Bank in almost every river basin on the globe and is now a professor at Oxford, has a technique that makes the point. Every day he receives e-mails with water stories from newspapers round the world. By briefly displaying to an audience just one day’s crop—including, say, drought in Australia, floods in Kenya, an empty dam in Pakistan, a toxic spill in the Yellow river and saltwater contamination in Haiti—he can soon show how water may dominate if not destroy lives, especially in poor countries.
Some of its most pernicious influences, though, never make the headlines. This is how they might read: “Over 1.2 billion people have to defecate in the open.” “The biggest single cause of child deaths is diarrhoea or diseases related to it.” “Nearly 1 billion people have no access to piped drinking water or safe taps or wells.” Each of these statements is linked to water.
Surprisingly, some of those who have to defecate in the open do not mind. Some rural men, and even women, quite enjoy a social squat in the bushes. But for many, and certainly for those who must live with its consequences, it is a disagreeable practice. Women and, especially, girls often find it embarrassing. Many women in South Asia contain themselves by day and wait till nightfall before venturing into the shadows. Girls at African schools without latrines often drop out rather than risk the jeers of their male contemporaries. Slum-dwellers in Nairobi have to pick their way through streams of sewage and take care to avoid “flying toilets”, plastic bags filled with excrement that are flung with desperate abandon into the night.
Without piped water to wash their hands with, let alone to drink, the open-air defecators and another 800m people with access only to primitive latrines are inevitably carriers of disease. If they could wash their hands with soap and water, they could block one of the main transmission routes for the spread of both diarrhoeal diseases and respiratory infections. As it is, patients with water-related diseases fill half the hospital beds in the poorest countries, and dirty water and poor sanitation kill 5,000 children a day.
Clean water is crucial for children with diarrhoea; they need rehydration and electrolytes to survive. Even then, they may still be at risk of malnutrition if they continue to suffer from diarrhoea, which will prevent them from absorbing their food properly. This usually has long-term consequences. Malnutrition in the womb and during the first two years of life is now seen as causing irreversible changes that lead to lifelong poor health.
Poor health, bad in itself, translates into poor economic output. A study in Guatemala followed the lives of children in four villages from their earliest years to ages between 25 and 42. In two villages the children were given a nutritious supplement for their first seven years, and in the other pair a less nutritious one. The boys who had had the more nutritious diet in their first two years were found to have larger bodies, a greater capacity for physical work, more schooling and better cognitive skills. They also grew up to earn average wages 46% higher than the other groups.
The cost to health and wealth
Studies in Ghana and Pakistan suggest that the long-term impact of malnutrition associated with diarrhoeal infections costs each country 4-5% of GDP. This can be added to a similar burden for “environmental risk”, which includes malaria and poor access to water and sanitation, both water- related, as well as indoor air pollution. All in all, the World Health Organisation thinks that half the consequences of malnutrition are caused by inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene. In Ghana and Pakistan the total cost of these shortcomings may amount to 9% of GDP, and these two countries are not unique.
The problem is not strictly a matter of water scarcity. Indeed, expanding the availability of water may actually increase disease, since it may lead to stagnant pools in which mosquitoes breed, and then spread malaria or dengue fever; or perhaps excess water will run through human or toxic waste and thus contaminate the ground or a nearby stream. So hygiene and protected storage are essential.
Yet there is a shortage of safe water for drinking and sanitation in many places, not least in the cities to which so many people are now flocking. Africa is urbanising faster than any other continent, and most migrants to the towns there find themselves living in slums. In cities like Addis Ababa and Lagos a quarter to a half of the population have no access to decent sanitation, and not many more will have access to piped water. No Indian city has a 24-hour domestic water supply, though efforts are under way to provide it in Mysore and a few other places.
Delhi’s story is typical. Demand for water there has been rising for years. The local utility cannot meet it. The city’s pipes and other equipment have been so poorly maintained that 40% of the supply fails to reach the customers. So the utility rations it by providing water for a limited number of hours a day and, in some places, by restricting the quantity. Householders and landlords build tanks, if they can, and fill them when the water is available. Residents, or their weary employees, set their alarm clocks to turn on the tap before the flow dribbles away to nothing. Property developers, anxious to take advantage of a booming economy and a growing middle class, drill boreholes, but these now have to go deeper and deeper to reach water.
As for the Yamuna river, long the main source of the city’s drinking water, it is clinically dead. Quantities of sewage are poured into it daily, 95% of which is untreated, and it is also a depository for industrial effluents, chemicals from farm runoffs and arsenic and fluoride contamination. The city’s master plan proposes three new dams, but they will not be finished for several years.
Many other cities have problems like Delhi’s, though mostly in less extreme forms. Nearly two-fifths of the United States’ 25,000 sewer systems illegally discharged raw sewage or other nasty stuff into rivers or lakes in 2007-09, and over 40% of the country’s waters are considered dangerously polluted. Contaminated water lays low almost 20m Americans a year.
Pollution, however, is not the reason that people in rich countries have taken to drinking bottled water. In the developing world they do it because that is often the only water fit to drink, and for the poor it is usually a significant expense. Not only are their incomes small, but they often pay a lot more for drinking water than do their richer compatriots. A litre of bottled water in India costs about 15 rupees (35 cents).
Bottled water often comes from the same source as tap water, where that is available (sometimes at a hundredth of the price), though it should at least be clean. It is often indistinguishable from tap water. In rich countries, it may have come from exotic sources like Fiji or Lapland, packed in glass or plastic destined to become rubbish, devouring energy on its travels and thus making it one of the least green and least defensible rip-offs on the market.
A concerted international effort is now under way to improve sanitation and the supply of drinking water. One of the development goals set by the United Nations at the millennium was to halve the proportion of people without basic sanitation and a decent source of fresh water by 2015. Progress is slow, especially for sanitation, and particularly in Africa, and increasingly policymakers are finding that heavily subsidised projects are failing.
Sexy loos
Outfits like the World Toilet Organisation, based in Singapore, now believe you have to make lavatories “as sexy as mobile phones” if you are to get people to accept them, and that means literally selling them. Once people have invested some of their own money in a loo, they will use it. The World Bank confirms that the most successful sanitation projects involve only a small subsidy.
Where building a fixed latrine is not possible—slum-dwellers seldom own the land they live on, or have much incentive to improve a site to which they have no legal rights—entrepreneurs may help out. The Peepoo is a personal, single-use bag that the Swedish founder of the company, Anders Wilhelmsen, describes as the hygienic version of Nairobi’s flying toilet, intended, to begin with, for the same Kenyan users. Sealed by knotting, it acts as a micro treatment plant to break down the excreta. Since the bag is made of degradable bio-plastic, when it has served its primary purpose it can be sold with its contents as fertiliser. Indeed, the hope is that a market will develop in which the same people will trade in the bags before and after use. Each will sell for 5-7 cents, about the same as a conventional plastic bag, and though a subsidy will be needed at first, the operation is meant to become self-sustaining, and indeed profitable.
Private enterprise also has a role in the provision of safe drinking water. A large market in home water-purifiers now exists all over the world. But a typical one, using reverse osmosis, may cost at least $170 in a country like India. Kevin McGovern, a self-described pro bono capitalist from New York, wants to bring cheaper purifiers to the poor. His company, the Water Initiative, has developed a filtering device that takes all the nasties out of water in the home and needs to be replaced only once a year. Unlike osmosis, it consumes no energy, and every drop of incoming water can be used for drinking.
The first country Mr McGovern has in his sights is Mexico, the second-biggest consumer of bottled water in the world because of the high incidence of arsenic, fluoride and pathogens in the water. Mr McGovern hopes to put in place a distribution system with a commercial interest in providing the machines and selling the filters. Volunteers and NGOs, he says, tend to set things up and then move on; a local commercial incentive is needed to sustain the operation, even if subsidies are required to get it started. Fortunately, two Mexican organisations have already promised grants, and the project is backed by the country’s popular first lady, Margarita Zavala.
Enough is not enough: it must also be clean
May 20, 2010
IF WATER has the capacity to enhance life, its absence has the capacity to make it miserable. David Gray, a water practitioner who has served the World Bank in almost every river basin on the globe and is now a professor at Oxford, has a technique that makes the point. Every day he receives e-mails with water stories from newspapers round the world. By briefly displaying to an audience just one day’s crop—including, say, drought in Australia, floods in Kenya, an empty dam in Pakistan, a toxic spill in the Yellow river and saltwater contamination in Haiti—he can soon show how water may dominate if not destroy lives, especially in poor countries.
Some of its most pernicious influences, though, never make the headlines. This is how they might read: “Over 1.2 billion people have to defecate in the open.” “The biggest single cause of child deaths is diarrhoea or diseases related to it.” “Nearly 1 billion people have no access to piped drinking water or safe taps or wells.” Each of these statements is linked to water.
Surprisingly, some of those who have to defecate in the open do not mind. Some rural men, and even women, quite enjoy a social squat in the bushes. But for many, and certainly for those who must live with its consequences, it is a disagreeable practice. Women and, especially, girls often find it embarrassing. Many women in South Asia contain themselves by day and wait till nightfall before venturing into the shadows. Girls at African schools without latrines often drop out rather than risk the jeers of their male contemporaries. Slum-dwellers in Nairobi have to pick their way through streams of sewage and take care to avoid “flying toilets”, plastic bags filled with excrement that are flung with desperate abandon into the night.
Without piped water to wash their hands with, let alone to drink, the open-air defecators and another 800m people with access only to primitive latrines are inevitably carriers of disease. If they could wash their hands with soap and water, they could block one of the main transmission routes for the spread of both diarrhoeal diseases and respiratory infections. As it is, patients with water-related diseases fill half the hospital beds in the poorest countries, and dirty water and poor sanitation kill 5,000 children a day.
Clean water is crucial for children with diarrhoea; they need rehydration and electrolytes to survive. Even then, they may still be at risk of malnutrition if they continue to suffer from diarrhoea, which will prevent them from absorbing their food properly. This usually has long-term consequences. Malnutrition in the womb and during the first two years of life is now seen as causing irreversible changes that lead to lifelong poor health.
Poor health, bad in itself, translates into poor economic output. A study in Guatemala followed the lives of children in four villages from their earliest years to ages between 25 and 42. In two villages the children were given a nutritious supplement for their first seven years, and in the other pair a less nutritious one. The boys who had had the more nutritious diet in their first two years were found to have larger bodies, a greater capacity for physical work, more schooling and better cognitive skills. They also grew up to earn average wages 46% higher than the other groups.
The cost to health and wealth
Studies in Ghana and Pakistan suggest that the long-term impact of malnutrition associated with diarrhoeal infections costs each country 4-5% of GDP. This can be added to a similar burden for “environmental risk”, which includes malaria and poor access to water and sanitation, both water- related, as well as indoor air pollution. All in all, the World Health Organisation thinks that half the consequences of malnutrition are caused by inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene. In Ghana and Pakistan the total cost of these shortcomings may amount to 9% of GDP, and these two countries are not unique.
The problem is not strictly a matter of water scarcity. Indeed, expanding the availability of water may actually increase disease, since it may lead to stagnant pools in which mosquitoes breed, and then spread malaria or dengue fever; or perhaps excess water will run through human or toxic waste and thus contaminate the ground or a nearby stream. So hygiene and protected storage are essential.
Yet there is a shortage of safe water for drinking and sanitation in many places, not least in the cities to which so many people are now flocking. Africa is urbanising faster than any other continent, and most migrants to the towns there find themselves living in slums. In cities like Addis Ababa and Lagos a quarter to a half of the population have no access to decent sanitation, and not many more will have access to piped water. No Indian city has a 24-hour domestic water supply, though efforts are under way to provide it in Mysore and a few other places.
Delhi’s story is typical. Demand for water there has been rising for years. The local utility cannot meet it. The city’s pipes and other equipment have been so poorly maintained that 40% of the supply fails to reach the customers. So the utility rations it by providing water for a limited number of hours a day and, in some places, by restricting the quantity. Householders and landlords build tanks, if they can, and fill them when the water is available. Residents, or their weary employees, set their alarm clocks to turn on the tap before the flow dribbles away to nothing. Property developers, anxious to take advantage of a booming economy and a growing middle class, drill boreholes, but these now have to go deeper and deeper to reach water.
As for the Yamuna river, long the main source of the city’s drinking water, it is clinically dead. Quantities of sewage are poured into it daily, 95% of which is untreated, and it is also a depository for industrial effluents, chemicals from farm runoffs and arsenic and fluoride contamination. The city’s master plan proposes three new dams, but they will not be finished for several years.
Many other cities have problems like Delhi’s, though mostly in less extreme forms. Nearly two-fifths of the United States’ 25,000 sewer systems illegally discharged raw sewage or other nasty stuff into rivers or lakes in 2007-09, and over 40% of the country’s waters are considered dangerously polluted. Contaminated water lays low almost 20m Americans a year.
Pollution, however, is not the reason that people in rich countries have taken to drinking bottled water. In the developing world they do it because that is often the only water fit to drink, and for the poor it is usually a significant expense. Not only are their incomes small, but they often pay a lot more for drinking water than do their richer compatriots. A litre of bottled water in India costs about 15 rupees (35 cents).
Bottled water often comes from the same source as tap water, where that is available (sometimes at a hundredth of the price), though it should at least be clean. It is often indistinguishable from tap water. In rich countries, it may have come from exotic sources like Fiji or Lapland, packed in glass or plastic destined to become rubbish, devouring energy on its travels and thus making it one of the least green and least defensible rip-offs on the market.
A concerted international effort is now under way to improve sanitation and the supply of drinking water. One of the development goals set by the United Nations at the millennium was to halve the proportion of people without basic sanitation and a decent source of fresh water by 2015. Progress is slow, especially for sanitation, and particularly in Africa, and increasingly policymakers are finding that heavily subsidised projects are failing.
Sexy loos
Outfits like the World Toilet Organisation, based in Singapore, now believe you have to make lavatories “as sexy as mobile phones” if you are to get people to accept them, and that means literally selling them. Once people have invested some of their own money in a loo, they will use it. The World Bank confirms that the most successful sanitation projects involve only a small subsidy.
Where building a fixed latrine is not possible—slum-dwellers seldom own the land they live on, or have much incentive to improve a site to which they have no legal rights—entrepreneurs may help out. The Peepoo is a personal, single-use bag that the Swedish founder of the company, Anders Wilhelmsen, describes as the hygienic version of Nairobi’s flying toilet, intended, to begin with, for the same Kenyan users. Sealed by knotting, it acts as a micro treatment plant to break down the excreta. Since the bag is made of degradable bio-plastic, when it has served its primary purpose it can be sold with its contents as fertiliser. Indeed, the hope is that a market will develop in which the same people will trade in the bags before and after use. Each will sell for 5-7 cents, about the same as a conventional plastic bag, and though a subsidy will be needed at first, the operation is meant to become self-sustaining, and indeed profitable.
Private enterprise also has a role in the provision of safe drinking water. A large market in home water-purifiers now exists all over the world. But a typical one, using reverse osmosis, may cost at least $170 in a country like India. Kevin McGovern, a self-described pro bono capitalist from New York, wants to bring cheaper purifiers to the poor. His company, the Water Initiative, has developed a filtering device that takes all the nasties out of water in the home and needs to be replaced only once a year. Unlike osmosis, it consumes no energy, and every drop of incoming water can be used for drinking.
The first country Mr McGovern has in his sights is Mexico, the second-biggest consumer of bottled water in the world because of the high incidence of arsenic, fluoride and pathogens in the water. Mr McGovern hopes to put in place a distribution system with a commercial interest in providing the machines and selling the filters. Volunteers and NGOs, he says, tend to set things up and then move on; a local commercial incentive is needed to sustain the operation, even if subsidies are required to get it started. Fortunately, two Mexican organisations have already promised grants, and the project is backed by the country’s popular first lady, Margarita Zavala.
Friday, April 30, 2010
MIT honors rainwater system inventor - BP Agrawal
Congratulations BP! Exciting times.
Article here.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 28 (UPI) -- B.P. Agrawal of Sustainable Innovations Corp. Wednesday won the Lemelson-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Award for Sustainability.
The $100,000 award honors Agrawal's invention of technology that improves access to clean water, healthcare and business development in rural India.
"Agrawal's creation of a community-driven rainwater harvesting system and mobile health clinics (has) the potential to improve the global public health system and better the quality of life for villagers in rural India," Lemelson-MIT officials said in a statement.
Agrawal's Aakash Ganga (River from the Sky) rainwater harvesting system is currently installed in six drought-prone villages in Rajasthan, the driest state in India.
"The AG system rents rooftops from homeowners and channels the rooftop rainwater through gutters and pipes to a network of underground storage reservoirs," officials said. "This network of reservoirs is designed to provide 10-12 liters of water daily to every person in an entire village for a year; to date, it has helped 10,000 villagers gain access to clean water."
Agrawal is also being recognized for creation of kiosk-based health clinics run by high school educated young women and designed to alleviate the shortage of trained medical staff and improve standardized treatment protocols for common ailments and preventable diseases in India.
He is to accept the award during a June ceremony at the Lemelson-MIT program's fourth annual EurekaFest at the university.
Article here.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 28 (UPI) -- B.P. Agrawal of Sustainable Innovations Corp. Wednesday won the Lemelson-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Award for Sustainability.
The $100,000 award honors Agrawal's invention of technology that improves access to clean water, healthcare and business development in rural India.
"Agrawal's creation of a community-driven rainwater harvesting system and mobile health clinics (has) the potential to improve the global public health system and better the quality of life for villagers in rural India," Lemelson-MIT officials said in a statement.
Agrawal's Aakash Ganga (River from the Sky) rainwater harvesting system is currently installed in six drought-prone villages in Rajasthan, the driest state in India.
"The AG system rents rooftops from homeowners and channels the rooftop rainwater through gutters and pipes to a network of underground storage reservoirs," officials said. "This network of reservoirs is designed to provide 10-12 liters of water daily to every person in an entire village for a year; to date, it has helped 10,000 villagers gain access to clean water."
Agrawal is also being recognized for creation of kiosk-based health clinics run by high school educated young women and designed to alleviate the shortage of trained medical staff and improve standardized treatment protocols for common ailments and preventable diseases in India.
He is to accept the award during a June ceremony at the Lemelson-MIT program's fourth annual EurekaFest at the university.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Water For People - Country Coordinator India - Position Open
Great job at one of my favorite organizations:
Country Coordinator – Water For People–India
Water For People is looking for a dynamic and enthusiastic leader for their programme in India. Based in Kolkata and managing a small staff team of ten, you will be responsible for a programme of over $1M and growing, with partnerships in 5 districts of West Bengal. Water For People is looking for someone who can build on the work of the last five years during which time innovative approaches have been modelled and continue to be developed in rural water supply maintenance, sanitation with zero subsidy, and school sanitation development. Your job will be to continue to drive innovation, but equally important to influence the sector (rural and urban) in finding ways of making government and private funds work more effectively in the pursuit of sustainable solutions for the poor. In West Bengal, we have a reputation to build on, while our contribution at national level is waiting for you to define. Water For People will provide a competitive package for the right person, but your motivation will be as much about wanting an opportunity to innovate and shape programmes in ways that you feel can provide lasting solutions, as it is about the financial rewards. Minimum of 10 years of development and management experience required.
For more details, please review the India Recruitment Packet.
To Apply
To apply, please submit your resume and a cover letter, which includes details of why you are interested in the position of Country Coordinator at Water For People–India and your salary expectations to careers (at) waterforpeople.org. We ask that you also provide us with a list of references that we may contact beforehand. Unfortunately we cannot acknowledge everyone, so if you do not hear back from us, please understand that we are not considering you for the position at this time. Please no phones calls or in-person inquiries. The closing date for applications is Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 11:00 p.m. MST.
Click here for more details:
www.waterforpeople.org/careers
www.waterforpeople.org/indiarecruitmentpacket
Country Coordinator – Water For People–India
Water For People is looking for a dynamic and enthusiastic leader for their programme in India. Based in Kolkata and managing a small staff team of ten, you will be responsible for a programme of over $1M and growing, with partnerships in 5 districts of West Bengal. Water For People is looking for someone who can build on the work of the last five years during which time innovative approaches have been modelled and continue to be developed in rural water supply maintenance, sanitation with zero subsidy, and school sanitation development. Your job will be to continue to drive innovation, but equally important to influence the sector (rural and urban) in finding ways of making government and private funds work more effectively in the pursuit of sustainable solutions for the poor. In West Bengal, we have a reputation to build on, while our contribution at national level is waiting for you to define. Water For People will provide a competitive package for the right person, but your motivation will be as much about wanting an opportunity to innovate and shape programmes in ways that you feel can provide lasting solutions, as it is about the financial rewards. Minimum of 10 years of development and management experience required.
For more details, please review the India Recruitment Packet.
To Apply
To apply, please submit your resume and a cover letter, which includes details of why you are interested in the position of Country Coordinator at Water For People–India and your salary expectations to careers (at) waterforpeople.org. We ask that you also provide us with a list of references that we may contact beforehand. Unfortunately we cannot acknowledge everyone, so if you do not hear back from us, please understand that we are not considering you for the position at this time. Please no phones calls or in-person inquiries. The closing date for applications is Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 11:00 p.m. MST.
Click here for more details:
www.waterforpeople.org/careers
www.waterforpeople.org/indiarecruitmentpacket
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
High Level Meeting / Press briefing TODAY April 21, Washington DC
MEDIA ADVISORY
EMBARGOED: WEDNESDAY, 21 APRIL 2010, 3:30 P.M. EST
For billions still living without access to sanitation and water the cost of inaction is too high
WHAT?
Press briefing to:
(i) Launch of the UN-Water Global Annual Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS), which centralizes key information/data, highlights challenges and elucidates where efforts stagnate for achieving the water and sanitation Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets.
(ii) Pre-meeting briefing: First annual High Level Meeting of Sanitation and Water for All, to be held on 23 April, to take stock of progress, decide how to increase the performance and effectiveness of the sector, and increase understanding of how investment in sanitation and water leads to greater economic and human development.
WHO?
Minister:
Mr. Bai-Mass Taal, Executive Secretary of the African Ministers' Council on Water (AMCOW)
World Health Organization:
Dr Maria Neira, Director for the Department of Public Health and Environment
UNICEF:
Clarissa Brocklehurst, Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
Civil Society:
Mr. Yakub Hossein, Freshwater Action Network South Asia (FANSA)
Donor representative:
Mr. Dick van Ginhoven, Sr. Water and Sanitation Advisor, The Netherlands
WHERE?
Ronald Reagan Building: The Hemisphere Room, Washington D.C.
WHEN?
Wednesday, 21 April 2010, 3:30 – 5:00 p.m. EST
For a copy of the embargoed report and password see link below below. Please note the report is on a protected FTP site and under embargo until Wednesday 21 April 2010, 03:30 pm EST:
WHO link: ftp://ftp.who.int/HSE/UN-Water%20GLAAS/
Password: ThroughtheGLAAS
For further information, please contact:
Geneva: Ms Nada Osseiran, Communications Officer, Public Health and Environment, WHO, Geneva, Tel. + 4122 7914475, Mobile +4179 445 1624, Email: osseirann@who.int;
Washington: Ms Donna Eberwine-Villagrán, Media relations, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), Tel. + 1 202 974 3122, Email: eberwind@paho.org.
New York: Ms Saira Khan, UNICEF Media, New York, Tel: + 1 212 326 7224, Email:sskhan@unicef.org
Washington: Mr Christopher Walsh, Communications Officer, Water and Sanitation Program,
Tel: + 1 202 473 4594, Email, cwalsh@worldbank.org
For media materials and info please visit:
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/glaas
http://www.unicef.org/
http://www.unwater.org/activities_san4all.html
EMBARGOED: WEDNESDAY, 21 APRIL 2010, 3:30 P.M. EST
For billions still living without access to sanitation and water the cost of inaction is too high
WHAT?
Press briefing to:
(i) Launch of the UN-Water Global Annual Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS), which centralizes key information/data, highlights challenges and elucidates where efforts stagnate for achieving the water and sanitation Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets.
(ii) Pre-meeting briefing: First annual High Level Meeting of Sanitation and Water for All, to be held on 23 April, to take stock of progress, decide how to increase the performance and effectiveness of the sector, and increase understanding of how investment in sanitation and water leads to greater economic and human development.
WHO?
Minister:
Mr. Bai-Mass Taal, Executive Secretary of the African Ministers' Council on Water (AMCOW)
World Health Organization:
Dr Maria Neira, Director for the Department of Public Health and Environment
UNICEF:
Clarissa Brocklehurst, Chief of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene
Civil Society:
Mr. Yakub Hossein, Freshwater Action Network South Asia (FANSA)
Donor representative:
Mr. Dick van Ginhoven, Sr. Water and Sanitation Advisor, The Netherlands
WHERE?
Ronald Reagan Building: The Hemisphere Room, Washington D.C.
WHEN?
Wednesday, 21 April 2010, 3:30 – 5:00 p.m. EST
For a copy of the embargoed report and password see link below below. Please note the report is on a protected FTP site and under embargo until Wednesday 21 April 2010, 03:30 pm EST:
WHO link: ftp://ftp.who.int/HSE/UN-Water%20GLAAS/
Password: ThroughtheGLAAS
For further information, please contact:
Geneva: Ms Nada Osseiran, Communications Officer, Public Health and Environment, WHO, Geneva, Tel. + 4122 7914475, Mobile +4179 445 1624, Email: osseirann@who.int;
Washington: Ms Donna Eberwine-Villagrán, Media relations, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), Tel. + 1 202 974 3122, Email: eberwind@paho.org.
New York: Ms Saira Khan, UNICEF Media, New York, Tel: + 1 212 326 7224, Email:sskhan@unicef.org
Washington: Mr Christopher Walsh, Communications Officer, Water and Sanitation Program,
Tel: + 1 202 473 4594, Email, cwalsh@worldbank.org
For media materials and info please visit:
http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/glaas
http://www.unicef.org/
http://www.unwater.org/activities_san4all.html
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Aveda / Earth Month / Walk for Water / Washington DC
Our friends at Aveda have done a LOT for global safe drinking water through the years. See for example this great article on Aveda's partnership with the Global Greengrants Fund here.
For Earth Month 2010, Aveda is organizing a series of 6km walks in a number of countries around the world. Click here for details on what's happening in your city.
For those of you in and around Washington DC:
Monday, April 26th 2010/10:00 a.m.
• Join us on April 26th, to Celebrate Earth Month and Walk for Water in a 4 Mile Walk around Washington, DC’s prestigious monuments.
• Your participation helps support our local water resources through our Earth Month Partner The Potomac Conservancy.
• $25.00 Registration Fee gets you into the Walk, a “Walk for Water Survival Kit” which includes an exclusively designed AVEDA tank top, an AVEDA water bottle as well as one ticket entry for our raffle.
• 100% of your registration dollars is donated to The Potomac Conservancy.
• Parking is available on the street; 3 Hour Parking available on Ohio Drive; Closest Metro is Foggy Bottom and is suggested.
• Pets also welcome with strict clean-up guidelines.
For Registration & Details: Please call Michele Simpson at 703/535-8538 or Bonita Mann at 703/535-8254, 310/980-9230
For Earth Month 2010, Aveda is organizing a series of 6km walks in a number of countries around the world. Click here for details on what's happening in your city.
For those of you in and around Washington DC:
Monday, April 26th 2010/10:00 a.m.
• Join us on April 26th, to Celebrate Earth Month and Walk for Water in a 4 Mile Walk around Washington, DC’s prestigious monuments.
• Your participation helps support our local water resources through our Earth Month Partner The Potomac Conservancy.
• $25.00 Registration Fee gets you into the Walk, a “Walk for Water Survival Kit” which includes an exclusively designed AVEDA tank top, an AVEDA water bottle as well as one ticket entry for our raffle.
• 100% of your registration dollars is donated to The Potomac Conservancy.
• Parking is available on the street; 3 Hour Parking available on Ohio Drive; Closest Metro is Foggy Bottom and is suggested.
• Pets also welcome with strict clean-up guidelines.
For Registration & Details: Please call Michele Simpson at 703/535-8538 or Bonita Mann at 703/535-8254, 310/980-9230
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Water for the World Act passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Happy Wednesday.
Senator Richard Durbin and Senator Bob Corker both issued press releases yesterday praising the passage of the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009 out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by unanimous agreement.
For Sen. Corker's statements, see here.
For Sen. Durbin's statements (not online as of this morning), or for a copy of the Act as passed out of committee, send me an email.
Some excerpts:
“The needs around the world are tremendous, but our foreign aid dollars are limited. We need to make every single penny count by better focusing and coordinating our efforts,” said Corker. “A lack of clean water leads to the deaths of 1.8 million people year – 90 percent of them children, stifles economic growth, keeps women and girls from going to work and school, and has contributed to political unrest in Sudan and elsewhere. Experts tell us every $1 invested in safe drinking water and sanitation produces an $8 return in costs. I’m a fiscal conservative, and I want to see each of our foreign aid dollars go as far as possible, so for many reasons, I believe water is one of the wisest places we can invest.”
“Access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation is a right that everyone in the world ought to enjoy but too few are able to realize,” Durbin said. “Water access is no longer simply a global health and development issue; it is a long-term threat that is increasingly becoming a national security issue. I hope the Senate can pass this legislation before this problem reaches a devastating tipping point.”
Building on the progress achieved through the Water for the Poor Act, Senator Durbin introduced the Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009 in March of 2009. With the goal of reaching 100 million people with first time access to clean drinking water and sanitation, Durbin’s Water for the World Act would do the following:
• Target underdeveloped countries with focused initiatives to improve access to clean water and sanitation;
• Foster global cooperation on research and technology development, including regional partnerships among experts on clean water;
• Provide technical assistance and capacity-building to develop expertise within countries facing water and sanitation challenges;
• Provide seed money for the deployment of clean water and sanitation technologies; and
• Strengthen the human infrastructure at USAID and the State Department to implement clean water and sanitation programs effectively and to ensure that water receives priority attention in our foreign policy efforts.
Senator Richard Durbin and Senator Bob Corker both issued press releases yesterday praising the passage of the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009 out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by unanimous agreement.
For Sen. Corker's statements, see here.
For Sen. Durbin's statements (not online as of this morning), or for a copy of the Act as passed out of committee, send me an email.
Some excerpts:
“The needs around the world are tremendous, but our foreign aid dollars are limited. We need to make every single penny count by better focusing and coordinating our efforts,” said Corker. “A lack of clean water leads to the deaths of 1.8 million people year – 90 percent of them children, stifles economic growth, keeps women and girls from going to work and school, and has contributed to political unrest in Sudan and elsewhere. Experts tell us every $1 invested in safe drinking water and sanitation produces an $8 return in costs. I’m a fiscal conservative, and I want to see each of our foreign aid dollars go as far as possible, so for many reasons, I believe water is one of the wisest places we can invest.”
“Access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation is a right that everyone in the world ought to enjoy but too few are able to realize,” Durbin said. “Water access is no longer simply a global health and development issue; it is a long-term threat that is increasingly becoming a national security issue. I hope the Senate can pass this legislation before this problem reaches a devastating tipping point.”
Building on the progress achieved through the Water for the Poor Act, Senator Durbin introduced the Paul Simon Water for the World Act of 2009 in March of 2009. With the goal of reaching 100 million people with first time access to clean drinking water and sanitation, Durbin’s Water for the World Act would do the following:
• Target underdeveloped countries with focused initiatives to improve access to clean water and sanitation;
• Foster global cooperation on research and technology development, including regional partnerships among experts on clean water;
• Provide technical assistance and capacity-building to develop expertise within countries facing water and sanitation challenges;
• Provide seed money for the deployment of clean water and sanitation technologies; and
• Strengthen the human infrastructure at USAID and the State Department to implement clean water and sanitation programs effectively and to ensure that water receives priority attention in our foreign policy efforts.
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