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Hi, my name is Rachael Moxley and as a new member of the Water For People DC committee, I’d like to share some thoughts about what inspired me to get involved:

My first introduction to Water For People was the panel discussion hosted by the DC committee at George Washington University earlier this year. At the discussion, John Sauer, the Assistant Director of Thought Leadership for Water For People, highlighted their Sanitation as a Business program in Malawi. The program was intended to address the problems that pit latrines will fill up over time until they can no longer be used, while others don’t work from the start. The latrines are often installed as a means of improving sanitation services with the help of foreign aid.

I was reminded of a similar failure with foreign water solutions, of which I became aware in college while I was part of a project team called AguaClara. AguaClara is a team of students at Cornell University led by Professor Monroe Weber-Shirk, a professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. AguaClara has a niche in small-scale, water quality treatment options for communities in Honduras whose primary drinking water source is surface waters that become turbid during the rainy seasons.

Some communities in Honduras were given or had purchased packaged water treatment plants by international development organizations. The shiny, metal, computer-run systems were flown in and handed over, and the companies who brought them were gone as quickly as they came. However, because of their poor design, high electricity demands, and lack of local supply chains for replacement parts, there has been little success with these systems. According to Monroe’s blog, 50% of the 20 package plants installed in Honduras between 2003 and 2008 have already been abandoned.

The project team developed from the realization by Dr. Weber-Shirk that although the water quality issues being dealt with by Hondurans were easily addressed by the standard methods of designing water treatment plants in the United States, once you took away electricity, the design was not well understood or well researched.

If you go to AguaClara’s wiki website, you’ll notice four words: research, invent, design, and empower. The first three underscore the focus of the efforts to improve and invent technologies to meet the needs of the communities, such as improved understanding of flocculation that have led to reduced tank sizes and lower costs, the invention of stacked rapid sand filters, which can be backwashed without electricity and the open-source web-tool that lets communities create custom designs complete with AutoCAD drawings. The result is eight gravity-powered water treatment plants serving thousands of people in Honduras. However, the last word “empower” is just as important as the first three.

AguaClara empowers local communities by partnering with the local non-governmental agency Agua Para el Pueblo, which although it translates to “water for people,” it is not affiliated with Water For People. Agua Para el Pueblo constructs the plants and offers capacity training for communities that have or want to have a treatment plant. As more plants are built, the network of communities with these plants, becomes a resource for community knowledge sharing and troubleshooting. And because the communities now have a more reliable water supply, the local water juntas have more leverage to collect the funds necessary to keep them running.

As a result of my experiences, I was impressed by John Sauer’s description of Water For People’s goal to identify research and development hurdles for sustainable water and sanitation practices to be developed in the countries where they work. I was also impressed by the importance that he placed on the involvement of the local community.

He explained that in Malawi there is a large demand for pit-latrine-emptying services, or else there would be if someone offered them. The research and development hurdle that Water For People identified was how to empty the latrines. In the US, septic systems are emptied with vacuum trucks. In Malawi, a motorcycle truck, or a Piki-Piki can more easily access remote pit latrines, but because it is so light, waste pumped into a tank on the cart could cause it to tip over. By figuring out how these pit latrines can be emptied or re-used, a local business for servicing the pit latrines can be established.

Through research and development Water For People aims to create incentives to spur local private sector businesses, so that the sanitation solutions become sustainable as they become profitable. In this way, the goal for addressing sanitation evolves from simply the installation of pit latrines to ongoing sanitation services, and improved sanitation will be made available to more people.

Volunteers through World Water Corps, an arm of Water For People, reaches out to communities to find out what is happening and what is needed by the people who need it the most. They record observations and interviews with community members in homes, business places, and schools that hold the Water For People programs accountable.

Working on the AguaClara team has shaped my perception of water development issues, and they align well with Water For People’s mission. The real challenge facing water and sanitation development is to develop solutions that use appropriate technology and provide local capacity-building to maintain and expand their own water and sanitation services. I am looking forward to supporting Water For People and its mission through the DC committee!

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Have you ever been asked or asked a traveling friend, how was Africa? Each time I hear it I can’t help but picture a map and all the regions of that vast continent where I haven’t set a foot down. For this trip, my Africa experience was three districts within Uganda: the Mukono, Kyenjojo and Kamwenge Districts. These three districts were familiar but subtly different in their water and sanitation situation. Mukono is a largely peri-urban district near the capital city of Kampala where it was sunny and hot all week long while we were looking at the household sanitation situation. After Mukono, we moved west to the mountain districts near Fort Portal to map community access to improved water sources. Here we found larger distances and rougher terrain between villages and some enjoyably temperamental weather, catching the field teams in some afternoon thunderstorms a few times. Kyenjojo as I experienced it, was a rich farming region with a high water table that gave the region plenty of water but caused some trouble with the pit portion of the pit latrines. Kamwenge presented similar weather, terrain and great distances to cover for our teams but had insufficient and seasonal access to water. Improved water sources in all three of these districts were limited and too often down for repairs.

The trip was a great success in the amount of data collected, but I think is the greater accomplishment was training a local team of enumerate surveys to use FLOW.

These individuals can now serve as an invaluable tool to Water For People – Uganda in establishing a baseline, taking action and monitoring progress throughout these regions. After serving on a Water For People committee for 2 years, this was my first direct experience with the work that Water For People does and it was an incredibly rewarding one! I was always impressed and inspired when reading about Water For People, their approach, practices and impact on water and sanitation access in the developing world and now I can say that I have seen it first hand. I had some beers with the Uganda Country Director and witnessed his passion for his country and promoting water as a business. I was also very impressed with the members of the sanitation as a business team and their commitment to latrines and innovation. Overall this trip was a wonderful cultural experience that reinforced my commitment and support of Water For People and their efforts!

If anyone has questions about what’s involved in joining a World Water Corps trip, feel free to shoot me your questions or click here for more information!

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Greetings from Fort Portal, Uganda! We are amidst our second week of data collection, working in the Kyenjojo District the last two days. The first week was spent in the Mukono District near Kampala. When I say we, we are Katherine Alfredo, Jeanne Depman, James Dumpert and myself all led by Andrew Britton. In addition the Water For People – Uganda staff, Gerald and Keziah, respectively responsible for the data analysis and our everyday logistics, are along for the ride through the trainings and out in the field.

Water For People – Uganda has teamed with Uganda Environmental Education Foundation for the Mukono District and they were able to round up an amazing group of people to be enumerators for the household water/sanitation surveys. We all met for the first time last Monday when Andrew showed everyone how to take surveys using FLOW on the provided smart phones. We then broke into teams and I spent the next 3 days with Deo and Richard. Deo, I believe, works for the Mukono local government as a non-profit liaison and Richard is a recent graduate studying deforestation nearby where we were surveying. Each morning we we drove away out along a dirt road and spent the next 8 hours going to individual households and asking them about their water sources and sanitation facilities. While I am out of place and do not speak the local language, I serve as tech support and make sure that after the volunteer team takes off the trained team can come back out and take more surveys in the region as needed by Water For People – Uganda and UEEF. Over the course of three days the entire team was able to collect over 450 surveys!

I write from the mountainous and beautiful Fort Portal where we are enjoying the sometimes rainy weather. Fitting with Water For People’s work in the region, I have found that what I miss most is an abundance of drinking water. Tap water is not considered potable and I have had trouble finding a place to fill my water bottle. When you ask for water at a restaurant, you get a half liter bottle. We are focusing on community water points in Kyenjojo for one more day, then we switch to the community water points in the Kamwenge District for the rest of the week. It’s beautiful out here and I am enjoying riding Boda Bodas (motorcycles) through the hills of rural Uganda!

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Hello, my name is Cidney Scanlon and I co-chair the Washington, DC Water For People Committee.  I am heading to Uganda in a matter of hours. Myself and three others were selected by Water For People to go on the World Water Corps trip to perform a baseline assessment in Uganda. In preparation for this trip I met with John Sauer, the Assistant Director of Thought Leadership of Water For People, who is playing a key role in the promotion of sanitation as a business in Uganda.

Sanitation as a Business. It was a new idea to me but makes sense. There are many pit toilets in Uganda but very few of them are being emptied. This may be an oversimplified picture of what Water For People is doing, but here is how I understand it. Water For People has identified successful, local businesses that could potentially expand their operation to include emptying pit latrines. They have also identified a business that could provide loans to these local businesses to help them get started in this sector. By helping the businesses expand their services to pit emptying, communities and/or households can now pay to have their pit latrines emptied. The question I still have is will this be affordable for the people who need it most? Maybe I can figure that out while I am in Uganda.

However we, the four volunteers, are going to help with a baseline assessment. The team of four volunteers, led by Andrew Britton with Water For People, are going to rural communities to help teach people how to use FLOW. Field Level Operation Watch (FLOW) is an application loaded on to Android cell phones that allows local leaders, field workers and volunteers like us to record data in all the countries in which Water For People works. There are pre-loaded surveys that are region specific, which local people and us will use to document the status of the water supply and sanitation at individual households. So, myself and the other three volunteers will be talking with local people, recording these surveys and helping Andrew to teach large classes of people to administer the survey so that Water For People can know what is happening on the ground in Uganda as it happens.

I will report back with photos and stories!

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Many will recall the grand prize at Water For People DC’s Women in Water Gala: a week long trip to Hawaii for two! Wondering who won??

Olivia is a manager in Chemonics International’s South Asia region. She purchased a ticket for the raffle, even though she wasn’t able to attend the event. Not thinking that she would win, she knew the money would be going to a great cause. Olivia’s generosity paid off in a big way. She and her fiance, Ivan Hodes, were getting married, but the young couple could not afford a honeymoon right away. Originally from Alaska, Hawaii was the perfect destination for their honeymoon!

Join us at our upcoming World Water Day event on Tuesday March 20 for more chances to win exciting raffle prizes! Reserve your ticket today!!

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The United Nations has announced that the world community has achieved a Millennium Development Goal 5 years ahead of schedule!

We have cut the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water in half! Over 2 billion people gained access to safe drinking water between 1990 and 2010. 89% of the world now has access to clean reliable drinking water.

As fantastic as this achievement is, this still leaves 11% – or 6.1 billion people – who risk illness and death with each drink they take. And only 63% of the world has access to at least basic sanitation. We’ve still got some work to do!

 

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This February Live Worldly has teamed up with partners Challenge21 and Water For People to launch Climbing the Mountain to Clean Water Campaign. Over the course of the month Live Worldly will be giving away unique items from Tibet and India to build awareness around the world’s most pressing development needs: water and sanitation and raise funds to help solve the problem.

“We recognize that the water and sanitation crisis is one of the most alarming issues that is affecting people worldwide and believe in doing something on a larger scale. Live Worldly is proud to support Jake and Challenge21 because the campaign is about taking action to raise awareness and money for this global issue,” said Kael Robinson, Live Worldly founder and Challenge21 partner. “Jake has uniquely combined his passion for climbing with his deep-rooted desire to address this worldwide cause and has set his goals very high. We’re proud to team up with Challenge21 and lend a hand in the fight for clean water. We encourage others to do the same by educating themselves about the global water crisis, sharing that knowledge and offering financial support.”

Challenge21 co-founder and renowned climber, Jake Norton, is aiming to be the first climber to complete the Triple Seven Summits – the three highest peaks on each continent – to help combat the world’s most pressing development needs: water and sanitation. His goal is to raise $2.1 million for the Denver-based non-profit Water for People and engage and impassion 2.1 million people in the global water and sanitation crisis. Having already climbed six of the Challenge21 peaks — Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Everest, Cerro Aconcagua, Mount McKinley, Mount Stanley and Vinson Massif — Jake is preparing for his next endeavor this February: El Pico de Orizaba in Mexico, the third highest peak in North America.

“Climbing the world’s great mountains has a huge amount of embedded drama and visibility… but, at the end of the day, usually the only people really benefitting from a given climb are the climbers themselves. As both a professional climber and a husband and father, I knew I wanted to keep climbing, but also ensure it meant something, and had an impact far beyond myself. In short, I wanted to make sure I have a really good reason for spending months of my life away from my family, in faraway places, putting myself at risk… Challenge21 is the direct result of this desire,” said Jake Norton, mountaineer and Challenge21 co-founder. “Each climb includes a fundraising target, and an opportunity for people to donate funds directly to Water For People via Challenge21. Partners like Live Worldly are enabling people to get involved through their purchases. The protection cords and other products from Live Worldly are not only a powerful symbol of the climbs of Challenge21, but also directly support our work and our goals with Water For People.”

Jake and his team will acclimate first on La Malinche, climbing some 4,100 feet to the summit, before heading off to Orizaba to climb another 4,400 feet, for a total of roughly 8,500 feet of climbing over four days. By raising money and awareness, every step along the way brings us one step closer to addressing the world’s problem of clean water and adequate sanitation. Over the month of February Live Worldly will be giving away featured products – Love in India Bracelet, Live Tibetan Protection Cord, Live Tibetan Prayer Bead Necklace, Live Tibetan Silk Khata, and the grand prize is an assortment of Live Tibetan products in a brand new Live Venezuelan leather bag (a $300 value).

Live Worldly is urging people to donate money to help the team reach their campaign goal of $8,500. Each dollar donated is good for one entry throughout the giveaways ($10 = 10 entries) and represents one foot of the climb to clean water. In addition, Live Worldly is selling featured products — Love in India Bracelet, Live Tibetan Protection Cord, Live Tibetan Prayer Bead Necklace and Live Tibetan Silk Khata — and donating a portion of the proceeds to Water for People via Challenge21.

“Unsafe water and sheer lack of sanitation in the developing world kills one child under the age of five every 30 seconds. As a mother of two children under the age of five, I imagine myself as one the mothers of the children who make up this staggering statistic and I feel more compelled than ever to break this extreme cycle of poverty that vastly differs from what we experience in the western world,” said Wende Valentine, major gifts officer of Water For People and Challenge21 co-founder. “Due to lack of infrastructure and poor programming over decades, basic human needs are simply not being met. Everyone can be a part of this massive global effort by becoming aware of these geographic disparities and by contributing towards lasting solutions through Water For People. Together we have a chance to make a measurable difference that can ultimately transform entire communities around the world and allow us to truly “live worldly”!

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The 2012 Asian Security Conference will begin tomorrow, Feb. 13, in New Dehli, India. This year, the conference will focus on ‘non-traditional threats’ including:

-Climate Change and Natural Disasters,

-Water Security,

-Energy and Food Security,

-Financial and Economic Security,

-and Trans-national Crime.

The issue of water security seems to be becoming the main topic of focus leading up to the conference. Arvind Gupta, director general of defence ministry-funded think tank Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, noted, “that with the increasing importance of trans-boundary rivers, hydro-diplomacy can be seen as a new framework for regional cooperation, with opportunities for dialogue, consultation and data-sharing both between and within states. On the other hand, control of water can also lead to hydro-hegemony and dominance.”

Using water as a point of cooperation, rather than domination and contention, will be a critical challenge in the 21st century as communities around the world face increasing water scarcity and stress. India is already facing difficulties providing reliable access to clean water to its ever growing population. To help address this problem in one of the world’s most populous countries, Water For People–India will implement programming in 148 communities and 138 schools in six districts in West Bengal. Water For People–India will also expand its work beyond West Bengal and into the new state of Bihar, where, in collaboration with the local government, it will select a district in which to target its efforts and create a strategy for reaching full water and sanitation coverage.

Water For People CEO Ned Breslin meets with partners and stakeholders in India.

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WASHINGTON, DC, United States (OOSKAnews Correspondent) — Water is not in itself a cause of international conflict, but it has a “multiplying effect” on other stresses, like government failure, according to panelists at a Water Security Plenary in Washington, DC last week.

“Simplifying” water’s role in international violent conflict down to a “yes-or-no situation is limiting,” said Kent Hughes Butts, professor of Political Military Strategy and director of National Security Issues Group at the U.S. Army War College.

“When we put labels on it (water stress) we may take a silo view and keep certain solutions off the table,” added Sandra Ruckstuhl, senior specialist for sustainable development at Group W Inc., who also spoke at the 12th National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment: Environment & Security.

However, Butts added, “violent conflict (as a result of water stress) should not be ruled out completely.”

One reason for that is because “stress of water is affecting more and more people in every region” both in terms of lack of access to freshwater and overabundance of water, such as flooding, said Jaehyang So, manager of the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program.

“We haven’t seen conflict (water wars) yet, but we are all working hard to keep it from happening,” So said.

Paul Faeth of CNA Corp., a DC-based research and analysis organization, pointed out that water can also be a “cause of peace for nations.”

Areas where nations have been able to successfully share a water basin and establish treaties and organizations that manage the water have actually eased tensions, he said. Ruckstuhl agreed with Faeth, citing water as an “opportunity to bring people together to find solutions to long-term issues” and an “environmental peace builder.”

However, “conflict over water at the local level is something that has been happening for awhile,” she added.

One reason is water’s cross-sectoral uses, which increase competition, said So. When there is a finite amount of water available for a community, all users must come together to determine how it will be divided in an equitable manner, she said.
Read the rest of this story and other stories on the WASH sector here.