Water and Justice: How The Water Project Realizes the Human Right to Water
The Water Project
Empowering Communities, One Drop at a Time: Pioneering Sustainable Water Solutions
On a recent trip to Kitui, Kenya, I sat in a dry river bed with a community, listening to them share their vision for building a dam and a shallow well so that they could harness the water that flows in their community during seasonal rains. For many years, they relied on one rainy season lasting just a couple of months to provide water for the entire year. Communities like this must dig down into the sand of a dry riverbed until they find water to collect, but during the dry seasons, the water disappears for months.?
In my discussion with the community, I asked where they go when the water dries up, and they pointed in a common direction. During the dry months, they walked six miles to get their water. The women and children bore the heaviest burden. The women woke up around 3:30 a.m., walked for hours, waited for hours longer at the source, and finally returned home with water for the day’s needs around 9:30 a.m. Every. Day.?
Our work in Western Kenya is much different. Whenever I arrive at the Kakamega airstrip to visit our local teams there, I pass over the Ishiuku River, which is about 50 feet wide and flowing with thick, brown water. Western Kenya is speckled with springs and shallow wells. The water is already there in Western Kenya, but the problem is contamination.?
We often hear the line: “water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink” from the 1834 Poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Whereas the poem describes a man at sea, surrounded by salt water, it translates well to the plight of many of the people we work with. They live surrounded by rivers, ponds, and springs whose water is contaminated.?
Today, I want to talk about how The Water Project (TWP) is developing and building an alternative — an alternative that starts from the ground up.?
As the Director of Programs at TWP, one of my biggest responsibilities is to be an activist for the mother walking miles to get water and the child bringing dirty water to school because there is no clean water at school or home.?
The water crisis is a justice issue.?
We are just a generation or two from a time in our own country when drinking fountains were a site of segregation and racism. This was a form of water crisis where some had access to safe drinking water, and others did not.?
The reality of our world today is that some of us have clean, safe water at our fingertips — as much as we need or even want — while others have no access to clean, safe water at all, or are walking miles and miles to fill up a five-gallon jerrycan of water for the day.?
We are talking about human access to a natural resource necessary for life. We are talking about people who work as hard as anyone I have ever met just for the basic tasks of cooking, cleaning, bathing, eating, and drinking.?
Environmental justice falls within social justice.?
The water issues that we are trying to address are deeply rooted in colonial histories, the extraction of wealth from African nations, crippling debts from the World Bank, and development plans drawn by politicians looking at post-World War II reconstruction of Europe as a model for Africa. This opened the door for economic strategies that, in the end, benefit the economy in the US and Europe much more than those in rural Kenya.
Specifically in the water sector, Western development organizations invested a large amount into new water points like handpumps, but left management to communities that did not have the financial or technical resources to make repairs when the pump broke. This allowed the West to be the hero and to then put all of the blame on rural communities when something broke and people faced a problem accessing water.?
On July 28, 2010, The United Nations General Assembly declared safe and clean drinking water and sanitation a human right (Resolution A/RES/64/292). Many national and local governments are working to expand safe and clean drinking water to their constituents, but face challenges with limited resources among the complex requirements for sustaining a water system. These include reliable electricity, professional technicians, and reliable management structures. Most of these resources are consolidated within urban areas.?
Water is a justice issue that continues to demand a response in 2024. Since 2007, The Water Project has been working to embody the words of Maya Angelou: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” We are working to respond to a global issue caused by what were, in some historical instances, mistakes, and in other instances, blatant manipulations of power.?
To continue our response, we need to confront the realities and inequalities present today for water access:
These statistics contrast sharply with our situation in the United States, where safe water is available at our fingertips.
In a picture, the problem is this.?
When people don’t have access to an improved water source, they get their water from a place like that picture: a river in Western Kenya, a scoop hole in Southeast Kenya, a swamp in Sierra Leone, or an open spring in Uganda.?
The time to act is now.?
The Water Project’s Approach and How It Affects Communities
Since TWP’s first water project in 2009, we have become more and more focused on addressing the water crisis as it exists in the lives of specific people, in specific communities.?
People need safe water close to their homes, and also at other critical places like schools and healthcare facilities. If, on your average day, you drink four cups of clean water and then one cup of contaminated water, what would happen? You would still get sick. We want to make sure people always have easy access to clean water and spend less time getting it so that they can be healthier and use more time and resources to try out ideas, build businesses, and invest in their children.
Our current vision is to achieve complete coverage of safe water access for people living within our four program regions. This means a safe water source within a 30-minute round-trip for every household, safe drinking water at every school, and safe water at every health facility.?
This is a big, ambitious goal. How can we achieve it?
The success of our work depends on strong trust and relationships, from the community members and local experts on the ground to donors who support the work financially. TWP builds relationships with those closest to the issue.?
These maps represent TWP’s service areas in three chiefdoms in the Port Loko District of Sierra Leone. Each square is one square kilometer. The saturation level of each square indicates population density. On the left, the blue dots show where TWP is currently servicing a water point (currently 354 in Sierra Leone). The image on the right represents our goal of complete coverage (note that there is an area in the north that is inaccessible because of land mines from a previous civil war).
Our process is:
You can see how we determine population coverage through a zoomed-in version of the map:
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We do this work in coordination with local leaders on the ground who show us how their communities get water, and with governments of every level: from leaders of the community to the county to the national governments. It takes more than a village to solve this issue.?
But we see the real impact happening when people no longer need to wonder where they will get their water. Water justice unlocks the potential of heroes who press through the challenges of day-to-day water access. Justice begins by addressing injustices that bubble up, ideally, into policy.
Jeff Muia is a 40-year-old man who hails from Ikiwe village in Machakos County, Kenya.
Mr. Muia was once barely surviving in the streets of Nairobi. The big city draws many people who are looking for a job to support their families back in the villages. Jeff could not find work in the village, which he attributed to a lack of water supply. Water impacts business, especially for farmers.
In 2017, we worked alongside the Ivuka Self-Help Group in the implementation of sand dams and wells. Reliable water changed the community's outlook.?
Mr. Muia shared the transformation in his own life. “The water in the sand dam never gets dry, no matter how hard the drought hits,” he said. “I remember the days I did not even think of coming home from Nairobi. Now, home is my beautiful place—a place full of hope. I have numerous crops on my farm, including bananas, spinach, kale, maize, and mangoes.
“I am always planting something for sale all the time. I would say I have cumulatively made over KES 1 million (over $8-9,000) over those years. This has enabled me to purchase a donkey, cows, and several goats. Apart from taking care of all personal and family needs, I am no longer looking for jobs.”
It is exciting to see the impact when people gain access to water, but the job is just beginning. One of the driving questions for TWP is: What will we do when our water points break? Not if they break, but when they break. A broken water point is as effective as no water point. Broken pumps are broken promises.?
Based on analysis of the most recent data published by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund through the Joint Monitoring Programme, it is estimated that almost 200 million people in sub-Saharan Africa (18.5% of the total world population) rely on about 700,000 handpumps to provide them with their main drinking water supply.?
When we talk about access to water, one of the biggest issues is broken pumps. In recent studies, anywhere from 25-40% of the hand pumps in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa are not working properly.
A new water project that provides clean and safe drinking water is only the beginning of the story. Maintaining water access is more difficult. It requires management, investment, and access to trained professionals as well as quality parts.?
And like water access, reliability is an equity issue. When people don’t think about where they will get the water for the day, when the amount of time walking for water is reduced or eliminated, they are able to pursue their interests. At TWP, we monitor water point functionality to repair our water sources as quickly as possible and keep the water running for years and years.
Last Wednesday, our US team was on a call with our Western Kenya Regional Director and a community member named Isabella, who lives in Kakamega County in Western Kenya. Isabella is a force. She shared with us how she leveraged access to safe water through a protected spring project to change her own life.?
In 2016, TWP worked with Isabella to protect a spring in her community. That is just the beginning of her story. With access to clean water, Isabella started a soap-making business. On every visit since then, we have watched her business grow. She employed more people and bought a machine to make the work easier.?
She announced on the call that she recently purchased a plot of land. Land is perhaps the most direct sign of prosperity in Kenya, and especially for a woman, this is a symbol of strength, ingenuity, and security. Now, she is not only selling soap; she is selling the reagents so that other people can make soap, too.?
We get to be a small part of Isabella’s life and the lives of many people who have flourished. With access to safe and reliable water, we get to see how they impact the lives around them.?
On this journey, I find inspiration and guidance from some of our own civil rights leaders and activists who have shown us what it means to embody justice and what it means to be human. When we see injustice, where do we stand? With whom do we walk? Whose voice gets to be the loudest??
On January 7, 1969, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a sermon entitled: "What are Your New Year's Resolutions?" In the sermon, he shared: "I said to my children, 'I'm going to work and do everything that I can do to see that you get a good education. I don't ever want you to forget that there are millions of God's children who will not and cannot get a good education, and I don't want you feeling that you are better than they are. For you will never be what you ought to be until they are what they ought to be.'"
I can't help but think this sentiment equally applies to safe water. I think of the potential unleashed when we work to lift away the heavy burden of the water crisis. What magnificent potential and power we will face when 200 million hours a day from women and children are re-allocated from water access to studies in school, community building, and business development!?
We are connected now more than ever before, through our communication, through our global economy, and, at best, through our activism, using what power we have to share and ease the burden of those using all of their energy for survival.?
The time is now!?
I will close with what may be a familiar story.?
This guy is walking in the village when he falls into a well. The sides are so steep he can’t get out. A doctor passes by, and the guy shouts up, “Hey, can you help me out?” The doc writes a prescription, throws it down the hole, and walks by. Next, a priest walks by, and the guy shouts, “Can you help me out?” The priest writes a prayer, throws it down the well, and moves on. Then a friend walks by. The guy says, “Hey, it's me, can you help me out?” And the friend jumps into the well. Our guy says, “Are you crazy? Now we are both down here!” The friend says, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.”
As an organization, we’ve been there before. Most of the people leading our local teams share stories of experiencing water scarcity at school, home, or both. As an organization, we are deploying data, experience, and expertise from lessons learned about the holes where we have found a way out. Our invitation to you is to join us as we jump into the hole so that hundreds of thousands of people might find their own ways out.
Spencer Bogle, PhD is the Director of Program at The Water Project. At the helm of The Water Project's program, Spencer is a visionary team builder overseeing program operations in the United States, working with locally registered and led teams in Kenya, Uganda, and Sierra Leone. He is passionate about ensuring that every community within The Water Project's program regions gains access to reliable and safe water. A true advocate for the right to water for all, Spencer is instrumental in orchestrating efforts to bring about sustainable solutions to water-related challenges.
Spencer holds a Ph.D. from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.
This writing was adapted from a presentation developed for Ingredion, a Water Project supporter.