When the topic of global poverty arises, most people’s thoughts first turn towards addressing the food shortages that plague developing countries. What these people may not realize, however, is that the lack of access to safe and affordable drinking water is an equally dangerous and imminent issue as the global hunger crisis.

The Millennium Water Alliance (MWA) arose to tackle the water safety issue head-on as a response to the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development’s as the United States’ commitment to “reduce the proportion of people without access to safe and affordable drinking water and sanitation” by 2015.

Since 2003, the MWA has founded major field programs in Africa and Central America that instate integrated approaches to water resource management in impoverished developing countries. In Kenya, for example, the MWA tries to provide safe water, improved sanitation and hygiene education to areas of rural Kenya that have been impacted and threatened by drought and climate change.

Water safety initiatives can be a springboard for solving many other health and economic crises in developing countries. The MWA’s initiatives impede the spread of water-borne illness, which in turn decreases the community’s health costs. Meanwhile, the same initiatives promote integrated water resource management that can employ members of the community and increase economic efficiency.

Many organizations believe that the challenge of alleviating global poverty must start from the bottom and work its way up. MWA takes this idea to the next level as it limits its scope solely to water safety, recognizing the domino effect that access to clean, safe water can have on a suffering nation.

– Alexandra Bruschi
Source: Millenium Water Alliance, Global Giving
Source: Millenium Water Alliance