WASHfunders.org - New Funding Opportunity

A new fundraising opportunity, via our friends at WASHfunders.org:

Editor’s Note: The STARS Foundation is a London-based organization that provides grants to nonprofits working with disadvantaged children. The Foundation is now accepting applications for their 2013 Impact Awards, including their new WASH category, which recognizes the impact that WASH solutions can have on improving the well-being of children.     

The STARS Foundation is pleased to announce the launch of the 2013 STARS Impact Awards recognizing outstanding organizations that achieve excellence in the provision of services to disadvantaged children.

In response to a growing demand for flexible funding, STARS invites NGOs to apply for up to 16 Impact Awards and, for the first time, has added a new category — Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) — due to the impact that improvements in this area can have on child survival and well-being.

Organizations working with children in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, or the Pacific are invited to apply.

The main Impact Award will be given to four winners per region — one in each of the following categories: Health, Education, Protection, and WASH. Winners will each receive $100,000 of unrestricted funding together with a bespoke package of consultancy, PR, and media support. Each organization will also benefit from the opportunity to work together with STARS for up to one year to promote their plans to other donors and seek to raise additional funding.

In addition to these main Impact Awards, smaller awards of different sizes will be made at the discretion of STARS’ board of trustees.

To find information regarding the application process, the eligibility criteria, and to apply online, please visit the Foundation's web site.

The closing date for applications is 1PM GMT Monday, November 12, 2012.

Water and sanitation: An opportunity for donors | EurActiv

Water and sanitation: An opportunity for donors | EurActiv

Europe, the US and other donors have an opportunity to be a more catalytic part of the solution to global water and sanitation needs by strengthening the capacity of developing countries to solve these challenges themselves, writes John Oldfield. 

John Oldfield is chief executive of WASH Advocates, a non-profit advocacy group in Washington, DC, dedicated to helping solve the global safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) challenge.

"This world has never been richer, smarter, or more abundant than it is in 2012. Yet there are currently almost one billion people without access to safe drinking water, and 2.6 billion people without a safe place to go to the bathroom.

Hundreds of millions of women around the world continue to be used as water infrastructure, and millions of children under the age of five die from preventable waterborne diseases each year.

So why does this fundamental global safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) challenge continue to exist, when we have known how to solve this problem since at least Roman times?

There are many answers to that question. The most intriguing to me is when people respond: “The problem is not solved because of a lack of political will.” Once that statement is made, the conversation typically dies, because most people look at politics and elected officials as part of the problem, not part of the solution.

While I do not deny that politics may be problematic in some instances (in particular as my own country, the United States, dives into its next far-too-lengthy presidential election cycle), politics and political leaders are the solution to solving the world’s drinking water and sanitation challenge.

At a recent dinner with four other non-profit leaders and the former prime minister of a sub-Saharan African country, I asked the prime minister: “What made it possible for you to strengthen policies and increase your national budget for safe drinking water, sanitation and basic public health while you were in office?” He told me that to do so he needed two very simple things:

• He needed to hear about the problem from his own people.
• He needed to see how the problem is solvable.

For the remainder of that dinner I pondered our education and advocacy work at WASH Advocates in Washington, DC, and the complementary efforts we seek to support in developing countries. I concluded that although no two advocacy efforts are ever precisely the same at a working level, they are essentially all the same philosophically.

How can we all make it possible for each government around the world to prioritise safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene? As the prime minister said, we in civil society have to let our governments know this is an important issue for us - their constituents - and that the challenge is solvable. Taking it one step further, we also have to show our governments how we are already solving the problem, and ask them to support and complement our efforts with stronger policies and increased budgets.

This approach has proven successful around the world and across the ages. Franklin Roosevelt was president of the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, progressive leaders came to President Roosevelt and asked for various concessions, including new pro-worker policies as part of his efforts to turn the economy around. President Roosevelt was quite progressive and pro-union, and said: “I want to do what you are asking me to do, but I can’t do it politically yet. I need you to go out there and make it possible for me to enact those policies.”

So the union leaders did just that:  In 1937 there were thousands of labour actions whose impact on the economy made it possible for President Roosevelt to enact those policies.

We do not need to strike for WASH. We simply need to make political support for WASH possible by being stronger educators about both the gravity of the challenge and its solvability. There is no politician anywhere in the world who does not want to provide his or her people with 100% access to safe drinking water and sanitation. However, many cannot yet make the political commitment to universal coverage – the risk is too high because WASH competes with so many other important development priorities (roads, schools, hospitals, jobs).

The job of civil society in the developed and developing world is to convince governments that what was once unavoidable (millions of deaths due to waterborne disease) is now unacceptable. That simple equation will provide those elected officials with the political cover they need to do what they already want to do.

The international donor community has an opportunity to be a more catalytic part of the solution than in the past. Certainly donors (in Europe, the United States and beyond) still need to continue funding safe drinking water and sanitation programs around the world. However, government and private donors also need to increase their financial and technical support for initiatives that will strengthen the capacity of developing countries to solve the water and sanitation challenges themselves.

Leading up to World Water Day (22 March), there are many ongoing efforts which deserve a closer look: strengthening community water board associations in Latin America, building the capacity of national and sub-national civil society WASH networks in Africa, partnering early and directly with mayors in developing countries instead of just inviting them to ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and bringing creative and leveraged business and financial approaches into the water and sanitation sector.

Perhaps one of the most worthwhile political efforts is the Sanitation and Water for All Partnership and its Liberia Compact recently signed by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

The end goal of many of these emerging political efforts is to make it unacceptable for senior political leaders throughout the developing world to commit to anything less than universal coverage of water and sanitation for their constituents. It is a worthy goal and warrants the increased support of the international donor community."

Twestival - Where Twitter Meets Safe Water

Q: Does Twitter actually add value to society?

A: Yes. Twestival.com

Regardless of the ongoing debate in my head about whether Twitter does indeed add value to society - who really needs to know when I'm on the john anyhow - the Twitter folks had me from "Hey - we're trying to raise money for safe water projects around the world for charity: water - want to help?"

charity: water rocks. Scott Harrison and his crew are playing to their strengths in promotions, events, celebrities for good causes, and raising a lot of money for high-quality nonprofits like Action Against Hunger, Partners in Health, and Water For People.

The safe drinking water and sanitation challenge is arguably the world's largest public health crisis.

And Tweet. Meet. Give. brings this reality to a whole new set of players in 160 cities, including each of yours. Let's get twittering.

Flush it?!? I would LOVE to.

Here is TIME Magazine's review of Rose George's book The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters:

Flush it.

OK, fine. Well, hold on. I am writing from India, where 700m of us don't have the luxury of a flushing john with which to flush our bacteria-laden poo much less books about sanitation. I am writing from Ethiopia, where only 8% (sic) of my rural compatriots have even the most basic sanitation facility. I am writing from Nicaragua, where only 34% (sic) of rural inhabitants have a place to go to the bathroom besides the jungle. And might I encourage Andrea Sachs to compete with passersby for a space on the sidewalk in front of her office next time nature calls? See for example, the questions posed by this campaign from the German Toilet Organization.

For that matter, how about Freddy and Sara, Ms. Sachs' two shelter cats, being deprived of their litter box? Would that change her mind as to the primacy of the sanitation issue?

I don't have the luxury of flushing away a well-written, well-documented, eye-opening book about a global health crisis that kills five times (sic) as many under-fives as does HIV. I'd like to be able to pull the handle on a porcelain toilet to wash out of sight a book which brings to light the fact that diarrheal disease kills twice as many under-fives as does malaria, and sickens billions (sic) more.

Ms. Sachs writes "A series of articles was plenty on this topic," and she also suggests reading it is an "ordeal by ordure." I am mildly impressed by her alliteration, but was a series of articles enough to focus the world's attention on HIV/AIDS? How comfortable were we discussing HIV twenty years ago? Did our discomfort make HIV a less worthy cause? Was an oped in the Washington Post enough to get the world's attention on malaria, or safe drinking water?

Only when sanitation (shit, diarrhea, feces, cholera, dysentery, 2m dead under-fives each year) becomes as compelling to talk (and blog) about as HIV/AIDS will the proper amount of effort be dedicated to inadequate sanitation. This remains arguably the world's gravest public health challenge, whose gravity siphons off innumerable resources from other less preventable health challenges and development priorities. And fatal diarrhea is preventable.

So, now that we are past the nonsense of a "series of articles" being enough, how about we start with a cover story on TIME to highlight the global sanitation challenge, and the work, for example of the Global Sanitation Fund? Or maybe more feature articles on Rock, Paper, Scissors are a better use of newsprint?

Love,

John

Turning Coffee into Water

Thanks to a wee bit of lobbying (it was actually a very easy sell), the Clinton Global Initiative organized a breakfast/coffee table discussion on Safe Drinking Water which I had the pleasure of moderating today.

As I was tasked with reporting back to the appropriate authorities at CGI, my careful note-taking has revealed some compelling ideas from the table:

1) First of all, the suggestion was made to encourage the Clinton Global Initiative to better prioritize the global safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene issue throughout all of the tracks (Global Health, Poverty Alleviation, Education and Energy/Climate Change for 2007 - tbd for 2008). Water is everywhere, but is rarely addressed directly and specifically (with an increasing number of exceptions like P&G’s PUR commitment, WaterHealth International’s commitment with Dow). The availability of water and sanitation will make all other sustainable development efforts, regardless of who funds them, more successful initially and more sustainable over the long run.

2) There needs to an increased advocacy effort to raise awareness of safe drinking water and sanitation as a major public health challenge, both in the developed and developing world. In particular, this awareness-raising needs to focus on the solutions to water and sanitation challenges, not just attest to the gravity of the problem. One participant focused specifically on ways to broadcast the water, sanitation and health message throughout the developing world, and getting those governments to better prioritize the issue in their own budgets. One useful precedent is the International Network to Promote Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage. Use such a tool to raise public awareness of the safe water issue throughout the world, use it to educate policymakers, use it to urge corporations, civic organizations, faith communities and private givers to focus on the opportunity to address the cause of development challenges, not just on the symptoms.

3) There is a bottleneck in delivering health-related products and services across the board. Think bednets, vaccines, pharmaceuticals. Also think safe drinking water, latrines, hygiene promotion programs. Although a debate emerged around the issue, the table’s thinking was that there is a reasonable amount of new, innovative and sustainable ideas in the water and health sector, and what is now needed are innovative ways of scaling those doable solutions up, out and over. One example was raised of using village health shops on a grand scale around the world to promote not just bars of soap but hygiene promotion messages. And the option of bolting on microfranchised water purification systems to such village health shops was discussed, as well as using these shops as a foundation from which to deliver social marketing techniques aimed at increasing the number of people with access to improved sanitation systems (e.g. pit latrines). And how about Trainers Without Borders to deal with some of the lack of institutional capacity to grow the sector?

4) Behind every commitment at CGI this year, and there have already been a LOT, there is an exceptional narrative story that if told eloquently and broadly will result not only in progress in the water sector, but additional such commitments at next year’s CGI.

More soon. However, a quick news flash: Bill Clinton announced in a press conference this morning that CGI intends to expand to Asia this year (they are shooting for a meeting in Hong Kong). One might consider lobbying CGI Hong Kong to make sure that the 700 million Indians without improved sanitation are represented, and that the 23% of Chinese (300 million!) without safe drinking water are well-represented in Hong Kong.

Throw Money at It

The global safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene crisis is one which can surely benefit from additional financial resources. There is little donor fatigue in this sector - there is simply a dearth of donors.

If the Wealth and Giving Forum last week in Greenbrier, West Virginia has its say that may soon be changing.

As Tom Watson reports in onPhilanthropy:

The gathering focused on issues surrounding water - from disease and poverty to environmental and security concerns - and participating families were asked a number of questions during a polling session about their attitudes toward philanthropy. Just half-way through the conference, they were asked whether they'd be more likely to give their resources to water-related issues; 80% answered affirmatively.

Of the high net worth individuals and foundations present, 80% are now more likely to give to water-related issues. I'll settle for that.

Unsafe water and inadequate sanitation, and the mortality (between 3-6 million people die each year from unsafe water) and the morbidity (each year there are over 4 billion serious cases of diarrhea) they cause, are not controversial issues. This is not gun control or immigration, and what is possible (and required) is a massive, nonpartisan response by both developing and developed countries. The scale of the solution must match the scale of the problem.