Women and girls in some remote communities walk an average of nearly four miles per day to get clean water for their families.
Globally, fetching water means 200 billion hours per year that people could have spent on more productive activity. Most of that time is spent by women and girls. The responsibility for providing water means, among other things, that girls are less able to attend school.
Addressing these and other issues is the mission of Surge for Water, a nonprofit focused on providing access to clean water and improving sanitation and hygiene in impoverished regions. “Women and girls bear the greatest weight of the water crisis,” says Shilpa Alva, the organization’s Founder and Executive Director.
A related concern is that some 12 million girls miss up to 20% of school each month due to lack of proper care for menstruation, Alva observes. “This disruption, which is also related to water, often leads to higher dropout rates, limiting their future employment opportunities and, in many cases, contrib-uting to early marriage and childbirth, further curtailing their ability to earn a n income.”
Women-led Surge for Water, founded in 2008, works in communities in Haiti, Uganda and Indonesia. Now the organization, looking to raise its profile and meet ambitious growth objectives, has formed a strategic partnership with Boeh Agency, a full-service marketing and public relations firm focused on the water and wastewater industry and led by Beth Boeh (pronounced “bay”) as president and CEO.
Under the partnership, the agency, nationally certified as a Women’s Business Enterprise, will apply its expertise in strategic communication to help expand Surge’s reach, engage new audiences and strengthen the mes-sage of water sustainability and equity. Alva and Boeh talked about their venture in interviews with Treatment Plant Operator.
