Water : life, bis

yeah, I love that picture, so I use it again - sustainability in imagery, peeps!

Friday 15th October was Blog Action Day 2010. Subject this year: the water crisis.
I participated on DH&DB with a small post summarizing the issue.

Friday 15th October was also the first day, or kick off more life, of the European Summit for Global Transformation. 

Since then, I've learned more facts about water and the water crisis and its impact, which we cannot even begin to imagine.
Did you know for instance that 884 million people lack access to safe water supplies, approximately one in eight people?
Did you know that only 62% of the world's population has access to improved sanitation (defined as a sanitation facility that ensures hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact - yeah you read that right)?
Did you know that every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease?
Did you know that millions of women and children spend several hours a day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources? That means hours of work lost for women, hours of education lost for children.

And my dear fellow women, what's following will hardly surprise you ;) : a study by the International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) of community water and sanitation projects in 88 communities found that projects designed and run with the full participation of women are more sustainable and effective than those that do not. This supports an earlier World Bank study that found that women's participation was strongly associated with water and sanitation project effectiveness.

Over 50 percent of all water projects fail and less than five percent of projects are visited, and far less than one percent have any longer-term monitoring.
(All these facts and even more on http://water.org)


Pretty sad huh?

But of course darlings, there is something you can do. There always is :)

There are a lot of initiatives and projects out there that you can support, and I know of one: the Nyabushozi project. The Nybushozi project was founded by Winfred Asiimwe and Christian De Neef last year, and aims at providing with water Winfred's region in Nyabushozii, Mbara Region, in Uganda.
This region has scarce water resources, not to say not at all except for the rain, collected in unclean ponds, shared between animals and people alike...

Source: http://www.nyabushozi.org/2010/07/nyabushozi-photos/

Of course, water is the first step, but from the facts mentioned above, one can easily understand that it is meant to tackle many issues: building a school for the children who will no longer have to walk endless miles to get clean water, engaging the whole community, focusing on women to maintain and make the project sustainable on the long term.

Winfred is currently based in the Netherlands and Christian lives in Brussels, they met at last year's European Summit, and have since worked together to help Winfred's former village in Uganda. However for this they need help. First steps have been taken, let's help them take the next ones. They need resources, funding, people spreading the word. Hey, guys at water.org, what do you think? ;-)

So let's Tweet and shout peeps!

Links:
- The Nyabushozi project;
- Water.org
- Follow Christian and Winfred on Twitter: @cdn, @Winfrd

THANK YOU!