Brand new campaign for 2011 - The World Walks for Water

Brand new campaign for 2011 - The World Walks for Water

It's an exciting moment for us, as we unveil our World Water Day campaign for 2011!
The World Walks for Water is a campaign launched to press governments to take crucial action needed to end the water and sanitation crisis.

This crisis sees women walk 40 billion hours per year carrying water weighing 18 kg which is still not safe to drink. It causes death, disease, missed educations and missed lives.
Last year our big campaign moment was the World's Longest Toilet Queue which saw 100,000 people involved in an amazing 80 countries. They made a stand ahead of a key meeting in Washington DC of developing and developed country governments who made commitments to make a difference. Like the effort of Burkina Faso's government which announced no new home in the country would be built without a toilet from then on.

But there is more to do. The World Walks for Water will mobilise more people in more countries and send a clear message to governments ahead of two crucial meetings in Africa and South Asia where politicians those regions and from rich countries will make firm commitments following on from Washington DC.

How can you get involved?
We've made it as easy as possible.

We want to stand in solidarity with the women and children forced to walk such long distances and hours just to find water. So we're asking you to either organise, or join, a 6 km walk on World Water Day 2011, from 19-22 March 2011.

Register your walk on the website, (which is just in beta version for a week as we want your feedback! You'll be able to register and find walks in a couple of weeks).

And then have fun! We want you to use your walks to make noise and get attention. So dress up, invite the media, do something outrageous and above all - make it political.

Making it political
This means contributing to the global pressure we'll place on governments to deliver water and sanitation to the poorest in the world.

And you can do it in so many ways - invite your local politician, even your prime minister or President to walk with you. Invite the media and tell them about the crisis. Get all the people who walk with you to sign a petition and send it through to us. Gather a photo petition!

Everyone is welcomeWe want this to be a truly global action. With walks springing up in London, Delhi, Kampala, Cape Town, Nairobi, Singapore and Washington DC we can truly make a global stand.

A day of Blog Action!

A day of Blog Action!

Wow! What an exciting and inspiring day it’s been – with bloggers around the world ensuring that the debate around the water and sanitation crisis is given a really high profile with an amazing Blog Action Day! This day of action has meant lots of different audiences are given the chance to join in a global conversation about the need to End Water Poverty.

There are simply too many to mention them all, but a quick round up of some of the posts from today….

The UK Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell joined in a day of blogging on the DFID Blog, posting about the need to raise the profile of water and sanitation issues, particularly through Sanitation and Water for All initiative (SWA).

The UK Foreign Office posting a number of blogs throughout the day, and the British Medical Journal posted on the need to provide extra funding for sanitation if we want to see the Millennium Development Goals achieved. The Freshwater Action Network (FAN) blogged on recent developments on the right to water and sanitation, and called people in the UK to action.

And even more happened worldwide: End Water Poverty members around the globe got involved, check out Tearfund, WaterAid, Ryan's Well, Water.org, CARE, Oxfam, Action Against Hunger for starters. And even the US State Department joined in!

We also saw the issues profiled in a number of prominent UK political blogs, including Left Foot Forward, Political Dynamite, Political Scrapbook and Labour List.

One of the great outcomes of the day was reaching a wide range of different audiences, hopefully sparking some discussion of water and poverty issues outside of NGOs already engaged in campaigning on these issues.

Thanks so much to everyone that’s got involved today both posting at spreading the message on twitter, (#BAD2010 and #BAD10) it’s been great and we look forward to reading every single one of the posts!

And if you posted on the day, do let us know so we get the chance to read it!

Living Proof - aid works say ONE and the Gates Foundation

Living Proof - aid works say ONE and the Gates Foundation

A quick post from us today to let you know about the Living Proof project from ONE and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

We were invited to the launch of the ONE version of the campaign in London last night, and attended alongside friends from the non-profit/NGO community, as well as business leaders, ministers from the UK government and celebrities such as Bono and Thandie Newton.

Living Proof aims to show the world that when aid is smart and well targeted, it works.

Bill and Melinda talked about the need to celebrate the successes achieved through international aid. In tough economic times, aid has come under much scrutiny (rightfully so, we need to make sure aid is as effective and well targeted as possible) but also has suffered in its public image with many sceptics questioning whether aid is lost to corrupt forces and whether it can actually help break cycles of poverty.

Both Bill and Melinda spoke of the virtuous cycle that could be achieved with smart aid. Healthy children lead to productive workforces, and so on. They spoke also of the amazing returns investment in aid can bring - from child deaths of 10.5 million a year in 2005, in 2009 8.1 million children died - a reduction of 2.4 million.

Melinda also highlighted vaccine programmes as part of the answer, and told us about aid investments made in the rotavirus vaccine which is helping in the fight against child deaths from diarrhoea. In Nicaragua the vaccine has nearly totally wiped out rotavirus in poor communities.

Mothers in Nicaragua wait for vaccinations against rotavirus - a major cause of diarrhoea.
Photo: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Aid of course is not the whole solution - but with such dramatic results the world, Melinda argued, would be foolish to ignore it as an amazing and impressive tool in the fight against poverty.

It's also clear that as a campaigning group demanding smart aid from governments, we need to do better in showing the positive results of aid to water and sanitation, as there are so many! We'll get started on this work, and keep you posted on how we're getting on.

Shikha Shrestha organized a massive campaign across her country of Nepal for World Water Day 2010, contributing to the global campaign moment The World’s Longest Toilet Queue. Here she shares some reflections on the political changes following the campaign, and how it proved to be a catalyst for civil society working on water and sanitation… which will really help as she prepares for Nepal’s participation in The World Walks for Water in March 2011:


“The World’s Longest Toilet Queue was a huge event in Nepal – we saw schools, universities, companies and whole communities across the country getting involved to make a stand for water and sanitation.

It was fun and diverse – over 27 districts got involved, including 8,000 people from rural communities. Sanitation is a taboo subject in our culture, so the total number of 30,000 participants was very much impressive and made an impression on the government

The result of this has been increased government commitment to reduce diarrhoea rates in dry seasons, resulting in a significant drop in the number of deaths this year. We’ve also seen an improvement in our policy strategy as we lobby for the inclusion of water and sanitation in the constitution. Furthermore, the country’s master plan of sanitation and hygiene is also in the last phase of development.

Regarding sustaining the trend of increasing budgetary provision to the sector, due to political conflict, the formal budgetary process has been halted, but we are seeing trends of increasing funding to water and sanitation.

And lastly, the campaign provided real opportunities to work with a more diverse network of organisations outside of the water and sanitation sector, such as youth organisations and private sector institutions and even celebrities. This has all helped our campaign messages reach new audiences and we’ve found new voices calling for change.

With all this success, there still remains much to be done. Nepal remains one of the least developed countries in the world (138th of 169 countries in the UN Human Development Report 2010 which was released yesterday). Though the same report shows our enormous progress: A child born today in Nepal can expect to live 25 years longer than a child born in 1970. A fact that truly mobilises us to campaign further and change more lives.”