Global Women's Water Initiative (GWWI)

The Global Women’s Water Initiative (GWWI) provides training for grassroots women and groups to implement water related-strategies so they can improve their communities’ health, self-reliance, and resilience to climate change. GWWI is building a cadre of women implementers and trainers who are versed in a holistic set of water, sanitation, hygiene skills and appropriate technologies.

 GWWI Programs

Since 2008, GWWI has hosted 3 trainings for 46 two-person teams of African women and provided seed funding for their water and sanitation projects in communities across 10 African nations, improving health, economic livelihoods, and environmental conditions.

Why the Need?

Throughout history, women have played a central role as stewards of water, often bearing the greatest burden when water sources are contaminated or unavailable. Women often spend more energy collecting and  storing water and doing water-related tasks (washing clothes, food, dishes). They can also expend valuable resources buying water treatment methods to clean their water or medicine when a family member falls ill from water related diseases. These burdens can leave them with little or no time for other activities, like getting an education or earning a livelihood.

●      The average rural woman walks 10 miles or more everyday to fetch water. In the dry season she may walk twice this distance

●      Rural women typically carry 20 liter water containers, which weigh 44 lbs, the same as the baggage allowance on most airlines

●      Women face a daily threat of violence or rape when they travel long distances to fetch water or must relieve themselves openly due to lack of toilets

●      1 in 10 African girls drop out of school at puberty or skip school during menstruation because of improper sanitation.

WEA is responding to these challenges through the GWWI, which offers offers water and sanitation trainings to women leaders in Sub-Saharan Africa to combat issues around lack of access to safe water and poor sanitation.

How Team Efforts Translate to Impact

Funds will be used to finance the 2011 East Africa Grassroots Teams to expand their projects. The Teams will construct and replicate the technologies they learned at the trainings as well as offer ongoing WASH Education seminars to their community and beyond.  The technologies that will replicated would be rainwater harvesting and ISSB Tanks to create alternative water sources,  Biosand Filters to filter water and ventilated pit latrines (VIP) for sanitation.

How GWWI Creates Sustainable Global Change:

GWWI partners with regional Africa-based organizations  to:

●      Co-create appropriate curriculum for its week-long training programs

●      Identify Training Participant teams from Community-based and Non-Profit Organizations

●      Partner with professional African Women Trainers to bring depth and regional knowledge to the trainings

●      Support participants to implement sustainable water technologies in their communities

●      Provide teams a network of resource partners to support their work as water advocates and solution implementers in their communities.