Water for all

Water for all

Water makes the earth fertile and therefore habitable.

We can’t manage without water, but we also cannot cope with too much water.

The rivers can barely cope with all the rain fall making some areas vulnerable to flooding.

Only careful water management can help us survive.

Dublin principle number 3

Looking at the principle number 3 of water resources management that were developed in Dublin in 1992 which has served as a base to a large part of the reformation of the water sector says ‘women play a central role in the supply, management and safeguarding of water’.

This pivotal role of women as providers and user of water and guardians of the living environment has seldom been reflected in institutional arrangements for the development and management of water resources. Acceptance and implementation of this principle requires positive policies to address women’s specific needs and to equip and empower women to participate at all levels in water resources programs including decision making, in ways defined by them.

 “Water is life”, “water is a rare resource” and “prevention is better than cure”. With this understanding the most effective means of consistently ensuring the safety of a drinking water supply through the use of a comprehensive risk management approach that encompasses all steps in water supply form catchment to consumer.

Water and Sanitation for Girls

Everyday, girls and women spend an estimated 152 million hours walking to fetch water. 

These great distances affect their ability to focus on other tasks, such as work or education, and leave women extremely susceptible to sexual assault and violence. Additionally, the lack of proper bathroom facilities forces women to find undisclosed locations in search of privacy - once again increasing their chances of being attacked. It’s crazy to think two actions those living with full sanitation facilities take for granted, could have such devastating and life altering consequences for others.

Going back to education, investing in girls’ education has an incredibly positive impact on economic growth and GDP of developing countries. That’s great! But no matter how much money is spent to put girls in school, none of it will make any difference if water and sanitation conditions in those areas are not improved.

Teaching young women the basic skills in technology and entrepreneurship.

The Technovation Challenge in Cameroon

The Technovation Challenge teaches middle and high-school girls how to make an app for an Android phone using AppInventor ( a program from MIT).  This 12-week, online, after-school program is structured so that groups of girls and their mentor (a women with at least two-years of work experience; not necessarily in technology) go through the curriculum together and create an app. Wrapped around the app creation program is the whole idea of a “lean startup”. Once the teams have identified the problem which they are going to solve, they are challenged to think about how their app will be placed in the marketplace, how they will address competition, how their app rates against other similar ones, what makes theirs edgier, more interesting, how they can expand it etc.  They are also taught presentation and pitching skills just like a real start-up company would need!

The young women are encouraged to create apps that address a problem within their own community. Many of the problems are basic human struggles, such as stress, fitting in, and uncertainty.  But the triggers and solutions vary greatly across communities.  The stress of living in a slum is very different than the stress of being in an affluent high school, which leads to amazingly diverse apps to help people navigate through their world. The finalists chosen from around the world are invited to Silicon Valley to the World Pitch which was held at the Twitter headquarters last year. The group that wins the competition gets resources to develop their app for the market. Check out the finalists for this year's challenge which was held at the Intel headquarters and  included a team from the University of Calgary as well as from Moldova, Nigera, South Korea, Brazil, and the US.

Join us.

Water quality

Increase in water quality would reduce incidents of diarrhea by 15 to20%. Good water quality impacts people's health through the prevention of malnutrition,well nourished people recover from illness faster and live healthy lives.

Poverty

·         Inadequate supply of water is the central cause of poverty in developing countries as it affects their basic needs, health, food security and basic lively hoods. Improved access to water is a major contribution towards poverty alleviation.

Role of the woman

Women play a central role in the supply,management and safeguarding of water.But the formal management of water resources is male dominant.The representation of women in the institutions is still very low.

This very important because the manner in which water resources are managed affects men and women differently.

The central role of the woman: provider and user of water  and like watch man for the living conditions has been rarely regarded in the institutional disposition in valorising water resources.