Water is Life, Clean Water is Peace.

Imagine a world where tens of millions of women and girls spend hours collecting water every day. Collectively, isn’t that a colossal amount of time spent going back and forth to the water source? What would they do if that time was freed up? More studying, perhaps for the girls, or they can use the time being just what they have to be - children. Instead, their days are spent walking miles and miles to ensure life’s basic need is met. Equally, women could use this valuable time for more economic activities. 

This image is not implausible given that women and girls spend 200 million hours collecting water.  What’s also true is that most of these women are in low-income, poor, and rural as well as some urban communities.  Each one of them can spend anywhere from half an hour to several hours a day trekking to and from the water supply source. 

Women and girls face the brunt of responsibilities when it comes to sourcing and securing the water needs of families. It is women and girls who have to give up their time, walk untold distances - sometimes face risks of rape or other forms of attack. Even when the water is brought to the house, it is often women and girls who have to ensure it is kept safe for human consumption- ensuring it is chlorinated when necessary and making sure it is kept covered at all times to avoid dirt from contaminating it. In this way, women and girls are responsible for a large part of the gamut of household water supply from the collection, transportation, storage to supervising its use. 

The time this takes is insurmountable- 200 million hours for collection and transportation alone. If this burden was put on one woman and she started the journey in 1 AD with a bucket of water on her head, she would still not have reached her destination yet, with at least 20,000 more years to go. Yet the world has come so far with technological and resource advancements. Simply put the practice of fetching water robs our women and girls many precious hours each day, and like many advancements we have made, water supply and sanitation services need to catch up. The opportunity cost is too huge to ignore. 

Today, while we honor the women and girls at the forefront of the water crisis, we should realize that, if not resolved, climate change will make this worse and the economic and health crisis created by COVID19 are also likely to complicate this situation. 

We honor the strength and resilience of women and we should take their hard work as a call to action for a world with water, sanitation, and hygiene services for all. 

The Mississippi River is a major waterway that over 20 million people and 50 cities rely on for drinking water and/or power manufacturing, tourism, and agriculture.  The Mississippi River transports 40% of our global food supply, and 60% of the world's grain supply, making the basin the #1 food producer on Earth. 

Jill Pietrusinski was attending the Montgomery, Alabama 2018 Zone Institute Meeting. when she heard Ambassador Andrew Young talk about the coalition of mayors along the Mississippi River. These mayors formed a network called the Mississippi River Cities and Towns Initiative (MRCTI) to do public and private infrastructure and service projects with the communities along the river to better protect it from erosion and pollution. The MRCTI coalition inspired Jill to think about all the service projects the Rotary Clubs along the river could contribute to the cause. 

The Mississippi River Mayors and Rotary International came together to restore the natural and built infrastructure of the Mississippi River Corridor to enhance community resilience across several state lines.  With a Rotary Club in nearly every Mississippi River city that belongs to the MRCTI, the partnership was a perfect match. Rotary Clubs along the Mississippi River are currently working with local mayors to identify scalable projects that can turn into Global Grants and collaborating with partners such as UN Environmental Protection (UNEP), Water and Sanitation Hygiene Rotary Action Group (WASHRAG), Environmental Sustainability Rotary Action Group (ESRAG), and American Cruise Lines. 

One of the many service projects involved collaboration and partnership with the University of Georgia and a UNEP grant to create a smartphone app.  This app is called the Marine Debris Tracker, an online open data citizen scientist tool used to track the type of trash and debris collected in or near waterways. Rotary Clubs in Minnesota, Missouri, and Louisiana, lead several community cleanup efforts utilizing the new app, collecting over 15,000 pieces of debris along the Mississippi River to date.

The coalition has also partnered with American Queen Riverboat Company to establish a community outreach cruise from Louisville, Kentucky to St.Louis, Missouri. This cruise would consist of 8 stops with a Rotary coordinated service project at each port to engage guests and crew with completing service projects at the communities they dock at. This initiative would bring guests closer to the communities and inspire them to protect the river that cruise utilizes for leisure. 

Learn more about the Rotary & MRCTI partnership on WASHRAG's website or connect with them on Facebook.

If your club wants to get involved with a river clean-up project in your area or around the world, reach out to Cleaning the Rivers of the World. Cleaning the Rivers of the World is an initiative started by the Rotary Club of South Ukiah and Rotarian, Salvador Rico. Learn more about how Salvador Rico is helping communities gain access to clean water to live their basic Human Rights by watching our first Together for Peace episode.

Dignity Toilets for Togo
          
Seven Rotary Clubs in the Olympic Peninsula District 5020 are working together to support a global grant called Dignity Toilets for Togo. The lead club, the Rotary Club of Nor'wester, has been heavily involved in supporting this project to improve access to sanitation in Togo. 

Rotarian, Doc Reiss visited the village of Zogbedgi in 2014, noticing the discrepancy of resources such as electricity and running water. The village is close to the ocean, so the water table (about 6-8 feet underground) is salinated, making it only suitable for bathing and washing clothing. Because of this, the local communities rely on purchasing potable drinking water from the government. Most everyone in the village has no access to bathroom facilities, so most relieve themselves in a nearby field or forest. 

Doc became committed to finding a solution to build bathroom facilities for the dignity of the community without using the scarce freshwater supply. He became close to members of the community and learned that the village flooded frequently, ruling out standard septic systems or latrines to be used in this region. 

Together, locals and Doc soon came up with the idea to create waterproof composting toilets made out of cement. The first pair was a side-by-side squat toilet with two waterproof chambers, each covered by a large metal plate in the black. Soon after they were set up in the village, several inquiries came along about how others could get a composting toilet for their family. 

Not only was this project focused on clean water and sanitation, but also encompasses economic development for the local community. In Togo, families used to be very large due to shorter life expectancies. With medical advancement and increased medical accessibility to the region, child mortality rates have lowered dramatically. Today, there is an abundance of adults in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties who are looking for sustainable employment. Doc decided to set up a local company and employ local workers in the village.

Dignity Toilets are pairs of composting toilets build with community labor and resources for each family or organization. One composting toilet is used at a time while the other composts. Each pair costs about $400 USD in labor and materials and are built to improve groundwater cleanliness, the health, and the safety of the family who uses it

Dignity Toilets bring dignity to the community by allowing locals a clean, private place to use the restroom that does not impede on their fragile water sources. This project is a prime example of how a peace project can combine Clean Water & Sanitation, Environmental Sustainability, and the Economic Development Rotary Areas of Focus to build resilience within a community. 

 To learn more about this global grant, please visit their website and contact the Nor'Wester Rotary Club of Port Angeles or the Rotary Club of East Jefferson County. 

Rotary Projects in search of support: 
          
Potable Water Supply using Sky Hydrant
Help 668 students and teachers in the Philippines gain access to clean water through a gravity-fed filtration system. This project aims to build and install a water reservoir at a spring about 500 meters from the local high school. The water from the catchment and reservoir would run through the main pipeline to the storage tank and into a sky hydrant filtration system. Learn more.

Water Project for Santa Barbara, Honduras
Rotary Club of Nelson, BC, has a global grant to construct a pipeline from a local cistern located in Comunidad Las Galeras in Santa Barbara, Honduras. The pipeline will be 7.2 kilometers long and will be suspended above the forest floor, laid on the forest floor, and attached to local bridges and river crossings as necessary. The water will flow based on gravity and will cost approximately $115,000 USD. Learn more. 

Developing School Sanitation Facilities
The Rotary Club of Baroda, India, and the Rotary Club of Chicago Heights - Park Forest, USA have teamed together to complete a Global Grant project to build toilet blocks and hand wash facilities in 12 schools. Over 2100 children in India will be directly affected by the new sanitation facilities. Learn more.

Join RAGFP friend and Nobel Peace Prize Nominee, Scilla Elworthy, in the Mighty Heart Open Course. 

In honor of International Woman's Day, the RAGFP invites you to learn from one of the most phenomenal female peacebuilders of our time, Dr. Scilla Elworthy. Scilla is a dear friend of the RAGFP and interviewee of the Together for Peace series. Learn from Scilla's mighty heart by taking her Mighty Heart course to evolve your peacebuilding skills, this September. 

1. Profound knowledge and training in the practical skills of conflict transformation.
2. Decades of peacebuilding experience and expertise.

The Open Course is for people of any age and background who want to build a safer world – whether in their personal life or globally. Over 10-weeks, starting September 7th, 2021 and continuing every Tuesday 14.0 - 15.30 GMT, we meet in weekly workshops, delivered by different peacebuilders and experts from the field. You also get to work with other participants in triads. The course provides you with the skills and tools to meet and transform whatever conflict or crisis you're facing. You will receive videos and notes of inspiration every week and exclusive access to the latest version of the Mighty Heart workbook. On graduation, you're invited to join our community of change-makers meeting once a month and apply for the facilitator training to deliver the Mighty Heart with us.

The United Nations (UN) serves as a global forum where countries raise and discuss the most difficult issues, including problems of health, climate, education and peace. Since helping to charter the United Nations in 1945, Rotary members and the United Nations have worked together toward peace and addressing humanitarian issues worldwide.

On 10 April 2021, join the #75yearsofaction livestream illuminating the shared values of the United Nations and Rotary- a global network of 1.2 million neighbors, friends, leaders, and problem-solvers who see a world where people unite and take action to create lasting change. Together, we will celebrate Rotary members’ lasting support of the United Nations and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The livestream premiere of reflections and flash talks will feature first-hand personal and professional experiences of Rotarians, Rotaractors, and officials from United Nations operations in Geneva, Nairobi, New York City, Paris, Rome, and beyond. Notable guests will include: UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Téa Leoni; Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General António Guterres; RIPN Jennifer Jones; RID/Incoming RIVP Valarie Wafer;  First Rotary Club President Sylvia Whitlock; and Past TRF Trustee and RAGFP's past Board Chair Carolyn Jones.