Marseille, A. (2016). The Fastest Way to Safe Water for All: Women. Solutions 7(6): 55-57. https://thesolutionsjournal.com/article/the-fastest-way-to-safe-water-for-all-women/
Perspectives The Fastest Way to Safe Water for All: Women by Arnold Marseille
Asha Abdulrahman
Members of the Mwihoko Women Group in Nakuru County, Kenya gather for a ceremony.
W
omen and children bear the primary responsibility for water collection, spending up to six hours each day collecting water.1,2 In Africa and Asia, women and children walk an average of 3.7 miles per day just to complete this task.3,4 What’s more, those women and girls across the world living without toilets spend 266 million hours every day finding a place to relieve themselves.5 Globally, one third of all schools lack access to safe water and sanitation, causing countless girls to drop out, and, every ninety seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.6 These are just a few of the many available hard facts illustrating how extremely important it is to give specific and dedicated attention to the link between water and women.
Since its establishment in 2004, Women for Water Partnership (WfWP) has made the case that dramatic success can be achieved by policies recognizing this link. Where this connection is made, results further underline this importance: involving women can make water projects six to seven times more effective. WfWP has lobbied the United Nations to make this linkage part of its vision for global development. As often happens, grassroots examples show how helping women gain access to water can transform lives. The Mwihoko Women Group in Kenya is a perfect example of the enormous difference that empowering women can make. In Ndibai Village in Nakuru County, 22 women, fed up with drinking contaminated water from a local river—for which they had to walk
many miles in unsafe environments to collect—decided to form a group with the main focus of gaining access to safe water at a reasonable distance. Initially, the women took part in a rainwater harvesting project which was designed and managed for them by a local nongovernmental organization. However, after the pilot period for the project, the Mwihiko women felt marginalized, and unable to realize the project’s potential. Soroptimist International of Europe, which has a club in Nakuru and is a member of the WfWP Kenya branch, then stepped in to help the women in realizing their ambitions. The women received training about how access to safe water, adequate sanitation, and proper hygiene can help prevent illness and death from diseases such as diarrhea and dysentery. Women were shown how to use taps, and, for those who had water tanks, it was explained that they needed to cover the tanks and clean them once a year. They learned how to use chlorine tablets to kill bacteria in their water, and how to keep the environment clean around water springs, boreholes, and taps. The women were inquisitive and eager to learn. Guided by WfWP, the Mwihiko women then partnered with other stakeholders such as local administrators, schools, and health officers to install water tanks at local schools and in households. Filters were put into these tanks, and public health officers checked the quality of the water. In this way, the women learned how to deal with local authorities in order to get things done, get their voices heard, and gain more influence. Next to water and sanitation, the Mwihiko women dreamed of having a training center for organizing courses for themselves and for other communities in the region. A plan was made to build such a center. However, much to the surprise of the women, the
www.thesolutionsjournal.org | November-December 2016 | Solutions | 55