The Charity
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Women's Earth Alliance
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Linking and empowering women environmental leaders around the globe.
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8 Donors
2 Projects since June, 2007
2 Active Projects since July, 2007
Charity Info
Based in: San Francisco, California
Year founded: 2006
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Project Info
Objective:
The Women and Water Conference is a 5-day workshop that will equip African women in local leadership positions to:
• Gain access to safe water technologies
• Build capacity and vocational skills, and
• Support creation of managable community solutions, which will efficiently ensure sustainable access to clean water.
Upon completion of this workshop, participating women will understand and have tools to:
1) design and implement a community-based water service project from start to finish,
2) share knowledge and develop peer networks with other women leaders; and
3) strengthen their leadership and community organizing skills.
Background
Throughout history, women have played a central role as stewards of water. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), “women are most often the collectors, users and managers of water in the household as well as farmers of crops. Women and children provide nearly all the water for the household in rural areas.” In urban areas, women are often in charge of accessing clean water and ensuring sanitation for their families. Women hold the knowledge around quality, location, reliability and storage of local water resources.
When water sources are contaminated or unavailable, women and children can be hit the hardest. They may be required to expend more labor collecting, storing, and protecting their water source, which can leave them with little or no time for other activities, like getting an education. The UN estimates that in some parts of Africa, women and children spend eight hours a day collecting water. Water-related diseases are also a common challenge to women, who are often responsible for caring for sick ones and have to step in for those who are ill and unable to work.
For some 30 years, international and UN global conferences have repeatedly recognized that effective sustainable water resources management depends on engaging women at all levels of decision-making and implementation. It is now recognized that the exclusion of women from the planning of water supply and sanitation schemes is a major cause of their high rate of failure.
The United Nations General Assembly, states :
“The [United Nations General] Assembly also stressed the need to involve women in all water-related development efforts. In many cultures, including indigenous societies, women are the guardians of water. They are the ones who often spend long, arduous hours searching for and carrying water. They need to be able to participate more meaningfully in decision-making on how water is used and managed, so that their countries can make full use of their knowledge, skills and contributions.” UN Secretary-General Message on World Water Day, March 22, 2006
However, women have often been denied their human right to water and are continually excluded from key decision-making roles, which has led to environmental destruction, deterioration of human health, and the feminization of poverty. More than half of the 1.2 billion people who do not have access to water are women and girls.
According to the FAO, too often the technologies that are available to women do not meet their needs, such as pumps that have handles they cannot reach or public wells that are in an inappropriate location. The Women and Water Conference creates the space for women to exchange technologies and best practices that are both practical and attainable.
Why Africa?
Africa faces some of the most acute and devastating water problems in the world, as result of high levels of poverty, population increases, droughts and climatic variability, inadequate coverage of water services, poor management and inefficient utilization.
An average household in Africa consumes about 40-60 L of water daily for drinking, cooking, cleaning, personal hygiene, etc. In some mountainous regions of East Africa, women spend up to 27% of their caloric intake in fetching water. Especially during the dry season, women must collect water from contaminated sources. In urban areas, there is serious water contamination as well. In Nairobi, for example, women in slums must buy water from vendors or collect it from communal water points, which are often unsanitary. There is a growing need for women’s leadership in Africa with regards to water. Many women have already taken initiative—our conference ensures that number continues to grow.
Description of Conference
The Women and Water Conference is a 5-day workshop designed to provide grassroots African women with the tools to implement a water service project from start to finish. This conference is holistic, in that it will not only be sharing proven and appropriate water technologies, but it will offer women valuable organizational skills and strategies to fully step into leadership roles in addressing their communities’ water needs. The conference curriculum will include theory, practical (hands-on) technology transfer, project development, implementation, and organizational workshops.
Local African women who have launched successful projects relating to water resources and community organizing, will be both the facilitators and trainers of the conference. All content will be designed based on local customs and gender needs.
Conference Participants
The participants will be primarily from East Africa with four additional teams from South and West Africa. Through an application process, two women will be selected to represent each organization. Each two-partner team will work to develop their project over the course of the conference. Several technologies will be offered during the conference and women will select the most appropriate one for their community.
The women chosen will meet specific criteria. The organization(s) with which the teams of women are affiliated must have an established working infrastructure and have already implemented a successful project in their community. The women must be proven leaders in their community and have experience in addressing local water issues.
The conference will be held in Nairobi and hosted by the local women’s organization, GROOTS Kenya. Eleven organizations from East Africa (22 women), and two organizations from each of the regions of South Africa and West Africa (8 women) will be chosen to participate. We anticipate that future conferences will emerge from this group.
Conference Themes and Workshop Content
Theme: Technology Transfer
The technologies and techniques that we choose will specifically address water quality and some may also be livelihood opportunities.
• Solar cooking and pasteurization
• Household water treatment options (ex. Biosand water filter)
• Rainwater harvesting
• Integrated water resource management
The participants will:
• Learn the theory behind the technology
• Participate in hands-on training
• Practice marketing scenarios for introducing the technologies into their community
Theme: Project Development
• How to carry out needs assessments in your community
• How to plan and manage a project from concept to implementation and keep it sustainable
• Identifying and using local assets in management strategy
• How to delegate and coordinate leadership and committees
• How to build strategic partnerships (public and private) for community initiatives
• How to prepare grant proposals
• Participatory action planning
Theme: Livelihood and Self-reliance
• How to create women’s collectives
• How to design a business plan
• Budgeting, cost recovery, and income-generation
• Fundraising Strategies
• How to design effective promotion and
Theme: Information-Sharing and Best Practices
• Sharing successes and failures
• Creating demand-driven projects (listening to the community)
• Using effective and proven Information Education Communication (IEC) materials for community outreach
Conference Follow-up
The African Women and Water Conference does not end after five days. Our commitment is to facilitate ongoing collaboration in the form of technical support, information-sharing and relationship building. We also intend to grant seed money to any teams of women who are ready to launch the projects they’ve developed during the conference. Our lessons learned and best practices from the 2008 conference will inform our plans for future conferences in South and West Africa in subsequent years and develop a new group of potential trainers in sustainable water technologies.
Funding forward
We will request that each woman team offer a training of the technology they learned at the conference to a neighboring community -- thereby “funding forward”. This will also strengthen the women’s skills and their confidence as trainers, adding more value and credibility to their work.
Technological/Project Support and Follow-up
A Single Drop advisor will be assigned to arrange and coordinate site visits to the women's projects twice a year in the first year or as needed. ASD will foster relationships between training organizations and the women trainees for future assistance. ASD will also be available for guidance through email and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).
Long-term, ASD will also help interested groups create community-based water organizations that can act as local hubs of water expertise. If women choose to start livelihood projects that prove to be income generating, ASD will assist them in expanding their offering to additional technologies or strategies that could assist their community in other water-related challenges.
Networking and Information Exchange
Women’s Earth Alliance will be responsible for a comprehensive follow-up process by way of an ongoing communication forum. WEA will facilitate continued collaboration, relationship building, and information exchange among the participants through arranging opportunities for technology-supported international dialogue. WEA will also engage the women conference participants with their larger network of global women environmental advocates. The follow-up process may involve publicizing the work of our women teams in the media, connecting them with further funding support, and sharing the women’s success stories with a global audience.
Conference Learning and Replication
Much of the follow up will depend on what we learn from the women participants. At this stage, we do not yet know the specific needs of the women. Throughout the conference women will be asked what support they need when they go home in order to be most effective. Much of our follow up will depend on this feedback.
Our intention is to replicate this conference model in other regions of Africa in the coming years. The conference evaluations and feedback from the participants will be key to replicating and improving the conference format. We will also distribute a conference summary report to the participants, trainers, funders, and other interested parties within six weeks after the conference.
Finally, we will invite the conference participants to take on an advisory role for future conferences. This will build continuity to the next conference, build structure for maintaining relationships among the group, and build leadership and capacity of the women participants to address larger issues they may come across in their work.
Our 30 women participants, nominated and selected from various local environmental organizations in Africa, will need your support to attend this conference.
Here's how you can help:
$50 - woman’s travel from East Africa (Total: 22)
$50 - printed training materials for one woman (Total: 30)
$500 - woman’s accommodation and meals for 7 days (Total: 50)
$600 - training materials and tools for training (Total: 4)
$700 - woman’s travel from Southern Africa (Total: 4)
$800 - woman’s travel from West Africa (Total: 4)
$1500 - International Organizer’s Travel (Total: 3)
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