No children were harmed sourcing this water.
Imagine that every time you need to take a sip of water, wash your hands or brush your teeth, you had a 5 year old walk alone for 6km carrying 20 litres of water back home; so that you could.
17 million African water girls and women spend a total of 40 billion hours collecting water each year. That’s approximately 6.5 hours per day, per person. What a enormous waste of time for 17 million untapped minds.
UNICEF reports that around 157 million people in the Eastern and Southern Africa region (ESAR) are not connected to clean and safe water, therefore they need to source their own from the external environment. 247 million people have no access to basic sanitation (such as a urinal). In countries such as Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, well over half of the population are forced to openly defecate in public places.
Polluted water + poor sanitation with a contributing lack of hygienic resources, are the main causes for one of the top child killers in the region; diarrhoea. Each year over 250,000 children below age five will die from diarrhoea related diseases.
The long, arduous, dangerous and physically taxing journey to fetch water for the family therefore becomes a necessary but ineffective solution to a situation where there is no other option. If the daily struggle was not enough – many women and children who must carry heavy loads on their heads, hips or backs often face severe damage such as pelvic deformity which can cause serious childbirth issues – for a great deal of these girls, the journey to these distant and isolated water sources can also have them fall prey to abuse and sexual violence as well as animal attacks from predators sharing the same rivers and streams.
When water is available within a 15 minute walk, there is 12% more chance that girls will attend school. That's equivalent to 400, 000 girls every day.
How can innovation and technology play a part in connecting more people to safe water?
An organisation you may have heard of by now, LifeStraw, have dedicated the past 23 years to redefining safe water through technology, innovation and quality design. Now with 6 products in their range of various sized water filtration systems, they distribute a solution to developing nations that can filter out virtually all of the microbiological contaminants that make water unsafe to drink. Today LifeStraw is used in water projects across more than 64 countries around the world.
The Hippo Water Roller Project was also established at a similar time in 1994. This organisation aimed to address the constraints and dangers associated with women and children gaining access to water over long distances. Now named Hippo Roller, the social impact of this enterprise has been huge.
Hippo Rollers create a much more efficient and humane process to collect water. Essentially they consist of a large barrel, with a handle that allows a person to push and roll it along the ground. These rollers also carry 5x more water than the more traditional means will allow, therefore both the physical strain and time required is astronomically reduced.
While they are not a perfect solution to the issue, the benefits of the Hippo Roller go beyond just the physical. Because they enable a single trip to provide the same water supply as 5, this technology provides families with better alternatives that may enable children to remain in school and not be required to assist in the task. Hippo Rollers have now provided this innovative solution to more than 20 countries, with a distribution of over 50,000 and reaching close to a million people.
So, the next time you might get a little huffy at dinner because your water wasn’t delivered at room temperature like you requested with a dash of lemon, or mindlessly run the tap the whole time whilst brushing your teeth, perhaps even enjoy a 20 minute hot shower in the frost of winter or find an ice cold bottle of water waiting for you in your fridge on those excruciatingly humid summer days, remember that there are millions of young girls out there, right at that very second who are dodging all kinds of dangers and yearning for an education, just so that they and their families can instead stay alive and somewhat hydrated.
If you wish to support the safe distribution of water around the world please look into Hippo Roller or LifeStraw now.
RELATED ARTICLES:
