United Nations World Water Day 22.3.08
United Nations World Water Day 22nd March 2008.
Soroptimist International Coleraine marked the forthcoming ‘World Water Day’ by inviting Northern Ireland Water Service engineer Mr Frank Stewart to be guest speaker at the monthly meeting in March.
Frank, who has been involved with international Water Aid Projects for many years, introduced his presentation by asking the audience to imagine: “How would you feel, if when turning on the tap in the morning to fill the kettle, flush the toilet, or brush your teeth, there was no supply of water?” A sobering thought indeed!
Using a combination of slides and dialogue, Frank expanded on the work of ‘Wateraid’ in the various regions around the world where it operates. Water-Aid was established 25 years ago, to overcome poverty by enabling the world’s poorest people to gain access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene education.
Unfortunately there are still 1.1 billion people in the world who do not have access to safe water and 2.6 billion without access to adequate sanitation. It costs Water-Aid only £15 to provide a lasting supply of clean water, sanitation and hygiene education to someone in Africa, Asia or the Pacific region.
Frank also presented some startling statistics of mortality in these areas, where a child dies every 15 seconds from drinking polluted water, just because there is no clean water. The average age a woman can expect to live is 43 years, and it is the women and girls who carry the containers of water on their heads for many miles, sometimes as many as ten miles each way!
It is of some comfort that Soroptimist International of Great Britain and Ireland have this year provided £12,000 to‘Wateraid’, bringing their total to £53,000 for previous years, to support these very worthy projects.
President Jean Doak thanked Mr Stewart for his informative presentation bringing awareness of the hardship that these people suffer, and giving all club members much food for thought.