water.org
Action: 20. Time: 5 minutes. Level of difficulty: Easy.
It’s that time of the year again — it’s time to talk about poop! Every year on November 19, World Toilet Day, the global health community shines a spotlight on the issue of water and sanitation, giving the world a chance to push the agenda for this taboo topic.
About 2.6 billion people do not have access to proper, clean sanitation (in other words, they don’t have any toilets), and as a result, they must face the consequences: disease, humiliation and poor hygiene.
People need to know these facts, and that’s where you come in. Help the international development community spread the word about this important day by donating your voice to World Toilet Day.
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Imagine if you could be the spokesperson for your favorite nonprofit for a few moments. What would you say? How would you mobilize their audience to take action against the world’s injustices? What issues would you focus on?
Water.org, in partnership with Twitter, is giving one lucky person the opportunity to do just that. During the month of August, water and sanitation activists can enter their competition to take over — or “twakeover”– their Twitter handle, @water, for an entire week.
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Interested in water and sanitation issues? Mike McCamon from Water.org talks about how you can take action on World Water Day next week.
World Water Day is on March 22. To you, it may be just another day. But for teenager Haregeweyni Teklay, it’s a day for celebration and giving thanks.
Until the Water.org water project brought a well to her rural Ethiopian village, Haregeweyni spent two to three hours walking to the nearest river –- and carrying on her back -– the five gallons of water that would barely meet her family’s daily survival needs. Often, this water was contaminated. Today, she has clean water right by her home, better health, and more time for school.
Unfortunately, for every person like Haregeweyni who gains access to safe water, many millions continue to go without. You can help change this.
A coalition of nearly 25 nonprofits have come together to activate a social media awareness campaign starting Monday, March 21, in celebration of Water Day. It is a 100 percent online/viral campaign. You’re invited to “donate your voice” on either Twitter of Facebook to the water cause for one week. Starting Friday, March 18 and for one week, you’ll have one item posted each weekday to your account.
Signing up takes less than a minute and our collective voice will raise awareness for this most important issue. Visit http://water.org/waterday to sign up. You can disconnect your account at any time. Follow the #water2011 hashtag this week to see how it’s going http://waterday.org/reporting. Once you sign up, you can see all of the scheduled posts.
On behalf of the nearly one in eight people on earth who don’t have clean water, thank you. Your voice will help spur the awareness and action needed to bring this most basic necessity to those in need
As advocates and activists, a lot of our support comes from actions that we take in front of our computers. Once we type in our names for a petition or click on a link, the issue is gone — unless we take the steps to stay connected, of course.
Screenshot of the site — pretty cool, right?
That’s why we’re really excited about Water.org’s latest project, my.Water.org. It’s an interactive online resource that allows people to see firsthand how water projects unfold in the real world, particularly in Haiti. You can choose a community and get weekly field reports — in the form of photos, videos and updates — from local certified partners as they deliver water solutions to the villagers.
In the Haitian village of Logalit, for example, you can find out how many households there are (60), how many of those households have latrines (46) and how many minutes it takes them to get to the nearest water source (up to 30!). You can even take a look at a photo of a villager grinding millet that reporter Kiki took just a couple of days ago.
If you have a moment, sign up for my.Water.org and play around on the website. It’s easy to use and you can even use your Facebook account to log in. And let us know what you think of the site in the comments below.
Last week, ONE and Water.org asked you to help celebrate World Water Day in a big way—by donating your Facebook and Twitter statuses for a whole week.
And boy, did you help spread the word. By Friday over 14,000 people had donated their Twitter and/or Facebook statuses, letting people across the globe know about the more than 200 million people who have gained access to clean water in the past 10 years.
A big thank you to everyone for sharing their voice—but there’s still much more to do. Over 880 million people still don’t have access to clean water and 2.5 billion don’t have access to adequate sanitation. So click here to learn much more about the issue, with everything from policy briefs and blog posts to quick facts and additional partner resources. Let’s make this crisis history.
This Monday will be World Water Day – and we’re getting ready to celebrate the 200 million people who have access to clean water for the first time. So how can you join the celebration?
It couldn’t be simpler. Go to oneweekforwater.org and sign up to donate your Facebook and Twitter status for World Water Week. When you donate your online status, ONE and Water.org will post updates on your Facebook and/or Twitter pages, change your profile picture and even update your background to raise awareness about water and sanitation.
Don’t miss the chance join thousands in celebrating clean, safe water all next week. Head to oneweekforwater.org and sign up today!
Check out this post from Erin Swanson of Water.org:
Remember playing the Oregon Trail game growing up? You chose your companions, forded rivers with your oxen, went hunting, and occasionally had a brief funeral for someone on your team lost to measles, a snakebite, dysentery, typhoid, cholera, and diarrhea.
Would you believe that MILLIONS of people are suffering from some of those same diseases today? Yes: dysentery, typhoid, cholera, and diarrhea. And what do they have in common? They are the result of unsafe drinking water and no safe place to defecate, no toilet. This is why these preventable diseases kill millions of people, mostly children, in the developing world today.
This is why today, November 19, is World Toilet Day. To raise awareness of the fact that one in four people on this planet don’t have access to a toilet. To raise awareness to the face that lack of sanitation is the world’s biggest cause of infection. And In India alone, the number of people who practice open defecation is double the population of the U.S.
Just as you were in that wagon with your companions on the Oregon Trail, risking your life for the promise of a better one, so we invite you to hop on our wagon today. Our vision: global access to safe water and sanitation. We have been working steadily towards this vision for 20 years. Join us and many other organizations on World Toilet Day to acknowledge the life-saving power of the toilet and appreciate the toilets in our lives. Join us as we raise a stink about the global lack of sanitation that causes not only embarrassment, concerns for safety, and lack of dignity, but preventable disease, illness, and all too often, death.
Seeing these diseases eradicated is possible, today. Will you “ford the river” with us?
Sign this online petition demanding action from global leaders to urgently address the sanitation crisis.
Learn more about World Toilet Day and sign up for monthly updates from Water.org here.
