Water's Ripple Effect

Helene Gayle is part of Change.org's Changemaker network, a network comprised of leading voices for social change. This post was submitted especially for Blog Action Day 2010.

For women around the world, we all know juggling our careers, families and friends can be a struggle. But for Ellema Sorra, age 25 living in Ethiopia “There is no free space. Wherever I go, there’s a job to be done,” she says. Between raising four children and a host of other duties, it's no wonder. In addition to cooking, she milks the cows twice a day and walks two to three hours every day to fetch water from a nearby town.

Having access to clean drinking water and a toilet and practicing good hygiene can make all of the difference in a woman’s or a young girl’s life. At CARE, we focus our efforts on empowering women and girls in the poorest parts of the world and we know that impacting even a single one of them, can send a ripple effect through their entire community.

For Ellema, receiving training on water and sanitation from CARE was just the spark she needed.  She gathered five women and convinced them to help her build the village’s first latrine.  After a week of digging, they finished the job. “I decided I should be the model in my village so I took the initiative first,” Ellema said.  Now, 8 of the 12 villages in her community have built their own latrines.  The elders have even created bylaws encouraging people to use them.

We know that lack of access to safe water and sanitation is the biggest killer of children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa. What’s less known is that clean water and the ability to wash hands boosts school attendance for girls and can even bolster self esteem and dignity.  Women and girls in Ethiopia who have access to a hand washing station or latrine were three to five times more likely to see themselves as having greater equality in their household.

The U.S. is on the brink of leading in this global movement to ensure that individuals, communities and nations have access to safe water and sanitation.  Encourage members of Congress to support the Water for the World Act.  This landmark legislation passed by the Senate on September 20, would enable the US to reach 100 million people with access to safe water and sanitation in the next five years.  The bill has only a few weeks left to pass the House of Representatives, but it won’t happen without action from you. It’s not all about building infrastructure or technology, it is about instilling healthy attitudes and policies and spurring entrepreneurial thinking and action.

We need a million Ellemas working for their communities and schools the world over.

With a small investment, the U.S. government can leverage large scale change. A five million dollar investment from USAID in Ethiopia, has leveraged $15 million in private funding from major donors like the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and the Coca-Cola Company.

Tell your Congresswoman/man to support immediate passage of the Water for the World Act.  Passing the Senate is a great accomplishment, but we can’t stop and rest with the job half-done.  Ellema’s already mobilized 20 women to construct a huge underground cistern to capture rainwater. She hasn’t stopped and neither should we.

Photo credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. This year's topic is water.