This month, ABC News featured H2O for Life on a special broadcast to highlight their work to improve Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in schools around the world.  H2O for Life matches schools in the United States with schools in developing countries to raise funds for improving WASH conditions in schools in need.  In the video above, learn how H2O for Life worked with HB Woodlawn High School in Arlington, Virginia, USA to raise $14,000 for proper handwashing stations, toilets and running water for a school in Bangladesh.

ChangeALife Uganda (CALU) recently announced a grant of $35,000 from Merck to support the organization’s Quarters for Water program.  Quarters for Water provides clean, on-site drinking water for students of St. Lawrence School and their rural village of Migyera, Uganda.  From CALU’s October Newsletter:

These funds will allow us to proceed with the next phase of this important project: drilling the test wells to determine the one that will yield the necessary volume of much-needed clean water for our schoolchildren.

Providing water, sanitation and hygiene education in schools is a powerful fit for a company with the mission to save and improve lives.  Meeting these basic needs in schools around the globe can increase attendance rates (especially for girls), reduce transmission of diseases and help transform entire communities.  For more information on this project, visit the ChangeALife Uganda website.  To learn more about Merck’s work in WASH in schools, read our blog post on their support of the Support My School campaign in India. 

At the Support My School Telethon this Sunday, GWC Program Director Maurie Carr presented a check on behalf of GWC member H2O for Life that will support WASH interventions in eight schools in the state of Gujara.  Watch the video of the check presentation below!

For more information on GWC’s involvement with Support My School, click here.

GWC and its members The Coca-Cola Company and Proctor & Gamble teamed with the WASH Advocacy Initiative to draw attention to the issue of women and water at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI).  The group developed a hopeful short film that depicts the importance of safe water, sanitation and hygiene to women, girls and their communities.  The film, It’s All in the Water, was produced with generous financial support from The Coca-Cola Company and the creative talents of advertising giant Ogilvy and Mather.  It was previewed September 20^th for a high level audience at a special CGI topic dinner hosted by Proctor & Gamble.

The film is the first piece to be developed in support of the Women for Water campaign being developed by GWC and the WASH Advocacy Initiative that will launch in early 2012.  Women’s leadership around the world will play a key role in the coming years to solve global water and sanitation challenges.  This decade-long, global campaign aims to inspire a movement to increase awareness of and investments in water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) for communities in need.

The film launch is another step in a series of GWC member investments in women and girls.  In March 2011, GWC member The Coca-Cola Company pledged $6 million to water and sanitation partnerships aimed in part at improving the lives of an estimated 250,000 women and girls on the African continent.  To support increased attendance of girls in school, GWC recently helped launch Support My School, a Coca-Cola and NDTV initiative aimed at improving WASH and other facilities in schools across India.  GWC has also invested in school WASH programs in Africa and Central and Latin America.

The Women for Water campaign will officially launch in March 2012.  To sign up for more information, click here.

Today, GWC, along with members Merck and H2O for Life, announced support for the Coca-Cola NDTV Support My School campaign, an initiative to improve water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and other facilities in schools across India.

The Support My School campaign is expected to directly impact at least 50,000 students in 100 schools across India.  Each of the 100 schools will receive improved access to water and gender-specific sanitation, infrastructure for water conservation and rainwater harvesting, landscape improvement, library construction, teacher training and new sports facilities.

Merck and H2O for Life have each committed to funding eight schools in India.

Through Support My School, The Merck Company Foundation is already supporting water, sanitation and hygiene improvements in eight schools in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, one of India’s most populous states and among the worst in water and sanitation coverage.

H2O for Life, a leading U.S.-based service learning organization, and its student partners are joining the campaign to provide funds for water and sanitation facilities in eight schools in the state of Gujarat with matching grants from other campaign supporters.

Other campaign supporters include UN-HABITAT, CAF India, the Pearson Foundation and Sulabh International.  In addition to the work directly in schools, campaign partners seek to increase awareness among all Indians about the necessity of water and sanitation in schools.

[The awareness campaign] is expected to reach 10 million people and will culminate on Sunday, September 18^th, with a one-day live telethon broadcast on Indian national TV.  Viewers from the United States can access a live broadcast of the telethon at www.NDTV.com.

Read the full press release.

In the Upper Copalita watershed of Oaxaca, Mexico, Sarar Transformación (Sarar-T) has changed the way three communities think and act toward sanitation and water access and management. Schools in San Miguel Suchixtepec, San Pedro El Alto and San Marcial Ozolotepec have historically had little to no access to water and sanitation.  In response, Sarar-T is working to provide access to water and sanitation as well as community gardens in pre-school, primary and secondary schools. 

The organization involves the entire school community in the initial assessment process and choice of technical options and also trains teachers, parents and students on maintaining and using the facilities and practicing proper hygiene. Through such trainings, Sarar-T has introduced and fostered the uptake of dry sanitation facilities—a previously uncommon technology in schools of the region—which conserve water and keep waste out of waterways.  To multiply their impact throughout the communities, Sarar-T trains students, administrators and parent committees to act as agents of change for water, sanitation and basic hygiene, bringing lessons and technologies to the greater community.

Sarar-T has found that knowledge transfer between subsequent generations of parent committees and school authorities is absolutely essential. Without mechanisms to do so, the operation and maintenance of facilities may fall by the wayside, causing them to end in misuse or disrepair.

In order to generate key findings and learnings from its work in the Upper Copalita, Sarar-T joined together with World Wildlife Fund Mexico to host a one day forum on best practices in water, sanitation and hygiene in schools.  The forum, supported by Global Water Challenge and The Coca-Cola Mexico Foundation, was attended by local and national stakeholders, including school, parent committee and municipal representatives as well as officials from the Mexican Ministries of Education, Health, Social Development, and Environment and Natural Resources. Representatives from The Coca-Cola Mexico Foundation and the Commissions for Development of Indigenous Villages and for National Forests also participated.

The discussions covered Sarar-T’s work as well as World Wildlife Fund Mexico’s activities in the watershed. The combined water, sanitation, hygiene and conservation programs of these two organizations have made these communities frontrunners and models in sustainable water use and environmental protection, key strategies for climate change adaptation. To read more, click here (in Spanish).

According to Ron Sawyer, a Director at Sarar-T, the forum was a “smashing success and a ‘watershed’ event in itself. It helped to demonstrate that rural school water and sanitation services can be appropriate and sustainable if the time is taken up-front to fully involve the school community in the selection and maintenance of the systems. The SWASH Forum in this remote mountain area succeeded in generating considerable enthusiasm and interest in follow-up at local, state and national levels.”   

After hearing presentations from the benefiting schools and municipalities, participants broke into smaller discussion groups to evaluate the success and shortcomings of the program. Across all of the working groups, participants expressed interest in the continued involvement of Sarar-T in project communities to ensure the full social uptake and adoption of the behavior necessary to support long term sustainability in water and sanitation. The full outcomes from the forum can be found here (PDF in Spanish).

The learnings from this forum come at a seminal time. The Mexican government is currently developing a comprehensive Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in Schools strategy with support from a recent Inter-American Development Bank loan totaling US$350 million. Drawing on the experiences of Sarar-T and other organizations working on WASH in Schools, such as GWC-funded Alternativas and Grupo de Estudios Ambientales, the Mexican government aims to reduce the incidence of waterborne disease and the related school absenteeism, to improve and expand school water supply and sanitation and to establish good hygiene practices in schools across the country.

GWC has supported the work of Sarar Transformación, Alternativas and Grupo de Estudios on WASH in Schools since 2009 through its Mexico Schools Program. To read more about GWC’s schools programs in Mexico, click here (PDF).

GWC member H2O for Life continues to work with schools in the United States to connect them with schools in the developing world to fund WASH projects.  The organization focuses both on raising awareness of the issue among American students and providing WASH in schools for students in need around the world.

Recently, two U.S. schools completed projects to raise money for the organization.  H-B Woodlawn School hosted a Water for Life Walk last month in suburban Washington, DC.  More than 300 people participated in the event, raising over $13,000 to support WASH in schools in Haiti and Bangladesh.  Read more about the walk on the H2O for Life website.

St. Anthony Middle School in H2O for Life’s home state of Minnesota held several fundraisers to support water and sanitation projects in Kirangari Primary School in Kenya.  Their fundraisers, including a silent auction and a dodgeball tournament, raised $10,000 for H2O for Life.  Read an article about their efforts in the St. Paul Bulletin-News.

According to UNICEF, over half the world’s schools lack adequate sanitation and safe drinking water.  Water, sanitation and hygiene are crucial for protecting child health and also safeguard cognitive development, promote school attendance and increase positive learning outcomes.  To learn more about the central role of WASH in education, see the GWC Resources page.

The Coca-Cola Company, NDTV Partner to Promote Healthy Schools in India through Landmark WASH Campaign

The Coca-Cola Company in India and prominent Indian news network NDTV have created the Support My School Campaign, a partnership to bring water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) to schools throughout India.  The campaign will support projects in at least 100 schools and will benefit 50,000 students.  UN-HABITAT, the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) India and Sulabh International will serve as learning and implementation partners for the campaign and the Pearson Foundation will support libraries and teacher training in participating schools. 

The campaign will include water access, gender-specific sanitation facilities, rainwater harvesting, environmental improvements and sports facilities as well as library construction funded by the Pearson Foundation.

India is off track to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for sanitation and according to Bloomberg, 75% of India’s surface water is contaminated by human and agricultural waste. Diarrhea remains the second leading cause of death for children under five and less than 50% of rural schools have separate sanitation facilities for girls.

Internationally renowned cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar will be a Campaign Ambassador and movie star Jackie Chan has publicly endorsed the campaign.

To learn more about the Support My School Campaign, watch the video above or visit the Support My School website.