The recent announcement by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation of a $9.5 million grant to bring safe water to underserved communities in Africa represents more than a desperately needed lifeline for tens of thousands of residents of Western Kenya.
It also signals a recognition of the potential of a new public-private partnership to advance breakthrough approaches to the global water crisis.
The partnership, the Global Water Challenge (GWC -- www.globalwaterchallenge.org), is tapping the distinctive expertise, resources and leadership of a diverse coalition of major corporations, private philanthropists, foundations, and aid organizations to more effectively deliver clean water, sanitation and hygiene education around the globe.
Established in 2006, the Global Water Challenge quickly found success with its first project, the school-based intervention subsequently funded by the Gates Foundation in Western Kenya's rural Nyanza Province. The GWC project, Water for Schools, developed out of a pilot funded by The Coca-Cola Company's East and Central Africa division, working with CARE Kenya and the Millennium Water Alliance.
Feeling the ripple effects of Water for Schools
Piloted in 45 schools in Nyanza Province in 2005, Water for Schools teaches water purification, safe water storage and hygiene education to school children, who bring the knowledge back to their families and communities, according to Daniel Vermeer, director of The Coca-Cola Company's Global Water Initiative, and co-chair of GWC.
Under the expansion funded by the Gates Foundation, a consortium led by CARE Kenya aims to take Water for Schools to at least 300 schools over the five-year period of the grant. In the first three years alone, the benefits of the program, rechristened SWASH+ (Sustaining and Scaling School Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Plus Community Impact) are expected to reach more than 90,000 students and their families. Ultimately, consortium partners will work with the government of Kenya to identify the most effective features of the project and scale them up province-wide and nationally.
"The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is pleased to join the Global Water Challenge as a way to learn whether school-based water sanitation and hygiene programs can be an effective, sustainable and scalable approach to enhancing safe water and sanitation," the foundation said when the award was announced in November. SWASH+ is being funded as part of a new learning initiative in water, sanitation and hygiene created by the Gates Foundation's Global Development division.
As in many other parts of the developing world, the need for such services is great in Kenya, where more than half of the rural population lack access to safe water and communities are severely impacted by water-borne diseases such as diarrhea, cholera and typhoid.
Call to action issued on global water crisis
The urgency of the global water crisis, and the stakes if it is not resolved, were underlined in the United Nations Development Programme's 2006 Human Development Report (hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/). Around the world today, 1.2 billion people are without access to safe water and 2.6 billion lack adequate sanitation. Two million children a year die for want of clean water and sanitation.
The crisis afflicts millions of women and young girls who are forced to spend hours each day collecting and carrying water, restricting their opportunities and choices. Water-borne diseases hold back poverty reduction and economic growth in some of the world's poorest countries, the report concluded.
The report estimates the cost of achieving the Millennium Development Goal on water and sanitation at about $10 billion a year, or "less than half of what rich countries spend each year on mineral water," yet "unlike wars and natural disasters, this global crisis does not galvanize concerted international action."
What is needed is a "global action plan to focus fragmented international efforts to mobilize resources and galvanize political action by putting water and sanitation front and centre on the development agenda," said Kevin Watkins, lead author of the report.
Collective approach to problem-solving pays off
While the Human Development Report's call to action was aimed primarily at governments of wealthy nations, efforts such as those mounted by the Global Water Challenge point to the promise of public-private partnerships in bringing a collective approach to the task of raising global awareness and support to tackle water and sanitation problems. The potential of such efforts was underlined by the success of GWC's maiden project in attracting a major grant from the Gates Foundation.
The Global Water Challenge provides a mechanism for leveraging the expertise and resources of each of its members, according to Coca-Cola's Daniel Vermeer. The company provided seed funding to start up GWC under the umbrella of the UN Foundation, and has been instrumental in bringing other companies and organizations to the table around the issue of water. (A transcript and brief video of Vermeer speaking about Coca-Cola's efforts are available online). The Coca-Cola Foundation also provided start-up funds for GWC and, in conjunction with the company's Community Water Partnerships program, supports a wide range of water projects around the globe in the 200 countries where the firm's 1000 facilities are located.
Seed funding was also provided to GWC by the Wallace Genetic Foundation, Cargill Corporation, Dow Chemical Company and Procter & Gamble. Other partners include the Blue Planet Run Foundation (see related story on founder Jin Zidell), CARE, the Case Foundation, Emory Center for Global Safe Water, the Millennium Water Alliance, the UN Foundation, UNICEF, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Water Advocates, Water for People and the Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council. Its executive director is Paul Faeth, who brings 20 years of experience working on water and environment-related issues, most recently as executive vice president and managing director for World Resources Institute.
Following its success in Kenya, GWC is now exploring whether it wants to seed Water for Schools programs in other geographic locations such as Asia or Latin America.
Showcasing water as a platform for community development
"In Kenya, we have seen powerful effects from a single intervention. By pooling resources where there are breakthrough opportunities, there is a potential to bring them to scale at the regional, national or global level," said Vermeer.
On a site visit to Nyanza Province in July, Vermeer said that he had been struck by the ripple effect that safe water and sanitation is having throughout participating communities, but particularly among women and girls. Following a village ceremony, several women took him aside to explain the changes that clean water had wrought in their lives.
Instead of taking their daughters six miles to get unclean water, they were now able to obtain clean water at the edge of their village. No longer are they chronically sick from water-borne illnesses. With their newfound time and water, they are growing a vegetable garden, improving their diets and even selling some of the surplus at the local market. With this income stream, they are pooling their money and have bought tables and chairs that they rent out for local events.
"What's beautiful about that is that nobody planned it. All it took was the water, and the rest they did themselves. They had the resources, the intelligence and the ingenuity to pull it off," he said. The example illustrates the vision that Vermeer said he shares with other partners in the GWC of "water as a platform for people to be able to develop themselves."