Stephen Sapienza, an independent producer, talks about the water issues that Dhaka, Bangladesh faces as one of the world’s megacities. Take a look at his full series on the Pulitzer Center website.

Fezila is not alone in her struggle. Worldwide, one in eight people do not have a source of clean water, and 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation. These people face a greatly elevated risk of entirely preventable diseases like diarrhea and cholera, which can prove life-threatening when, as is often the case, the sufferer is malnourished or suffering from HIV/AIDS.

This week is World Water Week, and here in Washington, a series of events has been informing the wider community about water issues, and rallying corporations, NGOs and governments around change. At yesterday’s advocacy event on Capitol Hill, interested parties learned what each of these groups is doing to solve this global problem.

Greg Allgood from Proctor and Gamble, showed off his company’s water filtering technology, which can make contaminated water drinkable in minutes, and is currently saving a life every hour in the developing world. Christian Holmes, the global water coordinator for USAID, discussed how the government maximizes the impact of its water programs through private sector partnerships, innovative financing mechanisms, technological innovation and a special focus on women. Jaehyang So, manager of the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation program, praised the recent Memorandum of Understanding with the US government, which would allow collaboration on efforts to promote clean water technologies, leverage private capital and improve water forecasting and information services worldwide.

Katherine Bliss, from CSIS, told the story of Fezila and Saim, the conclusion of which underlines the potential that partnerships and hard work can bring to the world’s poorest. A local NGO negotiated with the government water provider to bring clean water points to the slums, promising to pay the bills if residents failed to. As it happened, the slum dwellers paid on time and now have reliable, safe water to drink. With sustained effort and collaboration, Saim’s children may never face the same avoidable risks that he has.

Today is World Water Day. In anticipation of this day, Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Bob Corker (R-TN) introduced the bipartisan Senator Paul Simon Water for the World Act last week. They were joined by Senators Reid, Roberts, Cardin, Isakson and Leahy. This bill would strengthen America’s ability to build partnerships to provide clean water and sanitation to 100 million of the poorest people in the world.

Dirty water and a lack of basic sanitation are undermining efforts to end extreme poverty and disease in the world’s poorest countries. Almost 4,100 children die every day from severe diarrhea, which is caused by poor sanitation and hygiene. Women and girls in developing countries spend most of their days gathering water for their families, walking 3.5 miles on average each day to collect water. Girls often drop out of primary school because their schools lack separate toilets and easy access to safe water.

Access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation facilities could transform the lives of millions in the world’s poorest countries. Universal access to water and sanitation could prevent thousands of child deaths and free up hours each day for women and children to go to work or school. This is especially true for girls — studies show that girls are 12 percent more likely to go to school if water is available within a 15-minute walk rather than a one hour’s walk.

Investing in water and sanitation is also smart economically. Every $1 spent on water and sanitation generates the equivalent of $8 in saved time, increased productivity and reduced health care costs. Meeting the water and sanitation targets set out through the Millennium Development Goals could save sub-Saharan Africa $22 billion each year.

This morning most of us woke up, showered and brushed our teeth as we looked forward to the day ahead. Meanwhile in other parts of the world, nearly 900 million people were faced with yet another day without clean water, and 2.6 billion were left without access to adequate sanitation.

According to the Water and Sanitation Rotarian Action Group, almost 10,000 children under the age of 5 in third world countries die as a result of illnesses contracted by use of unclean water each day. What we tend to take for granted on a daily basis, many are left without, leading to some pretty ugly realities such as sewage and diarrheal diseases.

We talked a little bit last week about what you could do to help the global water and sanitation crisis. But since today officially marks World Water Day, a day designated by the UN to spotlight the global water and sanitation crisis, we wanted to share some cool things from our friends in the nonprofit community that you could do from your home or office desk to share awareness with others.

1. Get informed: Visit the charity: water website to learn some key facts about unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation, how this affects women and children and the vast improvements made to a community from building just one inexpensive well. You can also watch videos, read first-hand stories and help spread the word by posting a banner on your site, MySpace page or Facebook profile.

2. Donate your voice: Make your voice heard by allowing water.org to post daily status updates for World Water Day until March 26, using your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts. It’s as easy as a few clicks of your mouse.

3. Drink water to give water: Although a coffee or soda here and there doesn’t seem like much of a luxury, beverages add up fast. Watch this cool, eye-opening short film made by Living Water International and take part in their Lenten H2O Challenge. You don’t have to celebrate Lent to participate — just choose a period of time where you make water your only beverage. Then set aside the money you would have otherwise spent on beverages.

H20 Project from Living Water International on Vimeo.

4. Participate in a Q&A: Join US Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero for a live Q&A webchat on Thursday, March 24. Discuss global water issues with the Under Secretary, ask her questions and learn how the US government is partnering with international organizations in efforts to improve global water challenges. The discussion will be held from 8:30 to 9:30 AM, EST. Visit the event’s Facebook page for more information on how to participate.

5. Go to happy hour and have a beer: Okay, we lied. You’re going to have to leave your desk for this last one, but we promise it’ll be worth it. Wells4Wells is fighting the global water crisis one beer at a time. On Thursday, March 24, participating cities around the country will host its own happy hour, where bars and restaurants will donate a portion of their sales during these hours. Collectively, the money raised will go to funding the construction of a water well at a school in Africa. This will provide clean water for more than 1,000 children. Visit the site and find your city now.

Water and sanitation is a huge issue for us at ONE. Today is yet another reminder to be more conscious of our conservation efforts and find methods to help those in need. Access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation facilities could transform the lives of millions — but knowing how and why is a key part of being a smart and informed advocate for the world’s poorest people.

Some of the speakers from that day included Alexandra Cousteau from the Global Water Challenge, Mandy Moore, PSI Ambassador, and Dr. Greg Allgood from Procter & Gamble. In the afternoon all of the attendees split into different groups and met with different congressional offices. We were equipped with a comprehensive information packet about water in order to advocate for safe water whether it be for drinking or adequate sanitation.

The two meetings I attended were with some aides of Senator Brownback (R-KS) and Senator Bond (R-MO). Both offices stressed they are human rights supporters and clean water is an issue that should be addressed.
I made sure to wear my ONE t-shirt!

-Sara Eden Friar, MD ONE Member

This interactive site houses a wealth of information on water. Among many features, DOWNSTREAM examine water in terms of health, economics, conflict/cooperation, and climate. Each topic is analyzed and accompanied with reporting from around the world. You can share your story on water, meet the journalists, and watch video reports and clips from a World Water Day event in DC (including a speech by Secretary Hillary Clinton).

This compelling and informative site is produced by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Report, in partnership with PBS NewsHour, the Under-Told Stories Project, National Geographic, and the Common Language Project.

Don’t wait any longer, dive in now!

But everything is not as rosy as it seems. While the global goal for water may well be met by 2015, many of the world’s poorest countries won’t have even reached this goal by 2050—unless efforts are scaled up. Sub-Saharan Africa in particular is a long way from clean water for all.

Perhaps even more worrying is that we are seriously off-track on the sanitation target—to halve the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015. Globally, 2.6 billion people are still without a safe place to go to the bathroom. The resulting diseases kill 4,000 children every day—more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

At current rates, the MDG goal on sanitation won’t be met in sub-Saharan Africa for another 200 years. This gives sanitation the dubious honor of being the second most off-track MDG in the region, with only maternal mortality lagging behind.

Not only that, but the water and sanitation crises are also holding back improvements across lots of other areas—including education and maternal and child health. The lack of progress in water and sanitation is not only affecting human development, but also, crucially, economic growth. Why, then, do we hardly ever hear about it? There seems to be no political currency in championing toilets. Sanitation is literally a dirty word.

To prevent other development efforts from being undermined, WaterAid is calling on world leaders to take firm action and help reverse the global water and sanitation crisis. Ministers from developed and developing countries have the chance to do just that on April 23, as the first ever high-level meeting on water and sanitation takes place in Washington, DC.

The meeting will see the creation of a new global partnership to accelerate progress on water and sanitation—a global framework for action called ‘Sanitation and Water for All,’ similar to Education for All.

With the UN MDG Review Summit then in September, there is no better time for leaders, NGOs and the campaigning public to finally tackle this dirty issue.

-Mandy Folse, Head of Policy and Advocacy, WaterAid

On top of this already pretty cool news, National Geographic is offering the entire magazine for free download on their website. This also includes some additional interactive content. One of the highlights in this edition is an article from Tina Rosenberg called “The Burden of Thirst” which chronicles Ethiopian women tasked with transporting water in the region.

You can download the issue here.

Below is a video and key excerpt (full text here):

The United States is making major investments to combat preventable diseases and improve child survival through our Global Health Initiative. Increasing access to safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene will help save lives that are now being lost to preventable diseases.

Seventy percent of the world’s water use is devoted to agriculture, and the outcome of our work to promote global food security depends in part on having a successful water policy and sound water management. Floods and droughts can wipe out crops, and decimate economies that depend on agriculture.

We are also working to empower women around the world, because depending upon which continent we’re talking about, the average is 60 percent of the farmers are women. In addition to that, women who gain access to sanitation, who are freed from the burden of walking for hours each day just to locate and carry water, will find it easier to invest time and energy in their families and communities.

The stability of young governments in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other nations depends in part on their ability to provide their people with access to water and sanitation. A lack of water, sanitation, and irrigation we know leads to economic decline, and even can lead to unrest and instability.

Part of being serious about dealing with and adapting to climate change is about being serious about water. As the earth warms, rainfall patterns can shift, bringing new patterns of drought and flooding. And we need to get out in front of that problem.

Successful engagement on water can also affect how our country is perceived in the world. We spend a lot of time working on issues such as terrorism and arms control and nuclear proliferation. These are obviously important topics that deserve our attention. But the reality is that they are not problems most people deal with on a day-to-day basis. Water is different. When we demonstrate our concern for the issue, it speaks to individuals on a whole different level. Everyone knows sensation of thirst firsthand. We all have daily personal experience that we can think about and relate to, even if the nature and magnitude of that experience varies widely. Our ability to satisfy our need for water depends on our location and our circumstances. But as a matter of biological necessity, access to safe, sustainable supplies of water is a priority for everyone on the planet.

In the United States, water represents one of the great diplomatic and development opportunities of our time. It’s not every day you find an issue where effective diplomacy and development will allow you to save millions of lives, feed the hungry, empower women, advance our national security interests, protect the environment, and demonstrate to billions of people that the United States cares, cares about you and your welfare. Water is that issue.

I witnessed this every day in my medical practice in Nigeria. As a physician in my community, I would see children suffering from varying degrees of dehydration, diarrheal disease, malaria, malnutrition—all kinds of illness. I would see the same families return to the clinic week after week. At that time, in the 1970s, it was very common to prescribe supplemental foods, such as formula, to help with recovery. But unless the formula was mixed with safe drinking water, the children remained sick.

Mothers would feed their children this supplemental formula, but they didn’t sanitize their equipment or boil their water. That water was often contaminated with pathogens and disease. No wonder there were so many cases of diarrheal disease, so many cases of infant mortality. It was a vicious cycle.

At PATH, we work all over the world in places of poverty. In these places, sanitation and water supply are comingled. When you don’t have running water, it’s very likely that you also won’t have sufficient garbage collection or human waste disposal. And because of the scarcity of water supply, families must store water at home. PATH has traditionally focused on developing and improving household water treatment and safe storage products, because if you can get the water clean, then you reduce the issues that arise from poor sanitation and water.

We also understand the need to enhance community-level water supplies and improve disposal and sanitation to keep disease away from the water supply. PATH believes in an integrated approach that combines these preventative measures with treatment to address diarrheal disease and other illnesses. This approach encourages country leaders to access all the tools at their disposal.

With the effects of global warming and changes in water patterns and droughts due to human activities, the world is more likely to fight over water resources in the future than anything else. There is no question that we’re in a precarious situation going forward. Availability of safe drinking water, especially for young children, will become increasingly important.

Solutions exist today, but a lot needs to be done in order to bring these solutions to the people who need them most. Many water and sanitation services in developing countries are subsidized, but they need to be made a priority so that everyone can afford them. In addition, health groups and water and sanitation groups need to work together to overcome traditional barriers. In the past, sectoral divides have led to missed opportunities to join forces to promote a common message: water and sanitation interventions are critical to human health, especially children’s health.

That’s why PATH is working together with a coalition of nearly 30 groups from the water, sanitation, hygiene, and health sectors to raise awareness about this crisis, on World Water Day and beyond. We need to encourage donors, policymakers, and advocates to support both simple, existing interventions and the development of new technologies so that everyone has access to safe water.

To help us spread the word, please view this video below and share it with your family and friends.

-Ayo Ajayi, vice president of Field Programs, PATH

But around the world, women and their children do not walk for leisure as we do. They walk out of necessity to obtain water which is often both unclean and in short supply.

So during our walk today, we gave the kids a little project to participate in –get all the way around the lake and collect “drinking water” along the way. We mentioned that instead of school, many kids, especially girls, have to spend their days helping with chores such as fetching water from far away distances, so that their family can survive another day.

The response of the kids was unexpected and impressive. My daughter explained to me how “pumpers” can solve the problems that keep girls her age out of school. She had many thoughts on the subject, including how she herself would solve the problems, and I am excited that she is considering solutions on how to help out others who are not as fortunate. My son, the youngest, was keen on collecting the water and was very vocal about choosing which water bottle to drink from and why. I have to say that I was very proud that he made the connection between having plenty of clean drinking water and just a little dirty water, and how unfair it was.

By the end of our trek, everyone agreed that it was a long way around and a lot of hard effort. By being a ONE MOM, having access to talking points and ideas helps me share with both my girlfriends and our kids the situation that many children and women around the world face. Even simpler is the action we adults can take on behalf of other parents and their children who do not have access to the quality of life that we enjoy here. Being a ONE MOM makes these things simple. Thanks ONE!