What is water worth?

Amanda Ross
April 5th, 2012

It rained all day here in Warwickshire yesterday, but one of the top stories on the news was the hosepipe ban in the south and east of England. We take an instant supply of clean water for granted, because most of the time we have more than enough rain in the UK. How would we feel if we had to carry every drop into our homes ourselves? I for one would think twice before taking a bath!

In the Mukuru settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, residents pay more than 5 times as much for water as we do in the UK – and they don’t have the luxury of a piped supply into the home. Water has to be collected in containers from a communal tap – often some distance away. And, in times of scarcity, water prices inevitably rocket. In many rural areas of Africa, women and children walk for miles to collect water from wells.

In the UK we struggle to reduce our use of water and government water saving advice mainly covers non essential activity such as washing the car and watering the garden.

In contrast, according to this article, Kashmiri children resort to shaving their heads when water is short so that their hair doesn’t appear unkempt. I can’t see this being a popular piece of government advice here!

Practical Action has innovative ways of helping people gain access to clean water. By developing a partnership between local people and the utility company, improved access to clean water has been achieved for many thousands in the Mukuru settlement. Restricting our supply may help us to appreciate just how good (and comparatively cheap) our water is and encourage us to do a bit more to help the 1.3 billion people who lack access to safe water.

Once upon a time…

….there was a little girl who loved stories. As a little slip of a thing, she used to stand and swing on the garden gate, waving to passers-by in the hope that she could chat to them and ask them questions to find out their stories (she was a very curious little girl). A few years later, her very patient, very wonderful mother would read her favourite Maurice Sendak stories Outside Over There and Where The Wild Things Are to her every night. When she was at school, she’d set her alarm super early so she could wake up and read Enid Blyton books before going to lessons. English was always her favourite subject, and characters such as Elizabeth Bennett, Scout Finch, Jo March and Scarlett O’Hara were as familiar to her as her oldest friends. And then she studied the art of telling a story – for it is an art – during an English Literature degree at university.

Now that little girl (who’s not so little anymore) works for Practical Action.

I am that girl. And I work at Practical Action because I want to change the world. But my passion is storytelling: both discovering a good story, and then telling it in the best possible way. But how do you change the world with a story?

Well, this week, we at Practical Action launched our next five year strategy. It is bold and ambitious and exciting – but challenging too. The targets, both in terms of fundraising and impact at scale, are high.

But that’s because there are huge problems to solve. Right now 1.3 billion people across the world don’t have clean, safe water. 1 billion people don’t have enough food to eat. 2.6 billion people don’t have adequate sanitation. And 1.6 billion people don’t have access to modern energy. Too many people live in abject poverty. It is a world of great technology injustice.

There is no question that this needs to change. So over the next five years we will work towards four universal goals:

1. Sustainable access to modern energy service for all by 2030
2. Systems which provide food security and livelihoods for people in rural areas
3. Improved access to drinking water, sanitation and waste services for people living in towns and cities
4. Reduced risk of disasters for marginalised communities

And by the end of this next strategy period, in 2017, we will have transformed the lives of 6 million people.

That is an exhilarating prospect for me.

Because 6 million people = 6 million stories to find and tell.

Each of those 6 million is not just a ‘project beneficiary’ but a living, feeling, thinking human being with their own unique life story. And those 6 million life stories are 6 million more reasons to support Practical Action, today and for the future.

I can’t wait to get started.

Practical Action Strategy 2012 -17

Margaret Gardner
April 2nd, 2012

A confession – I hear the word strategy and sometimes I switch off – dull, boring business speak, consigned with phrases like ‘low hanging fruit’ to the Room 101 of development i.e. put in the bin!

But for the last 18 months we have been working on Practical Action’s new strategy – not full time you understand but taking our time so that people were able to input their views and ideas could be tested out.

Today is the first day of the new strategy. It’s exciting! The strategy builds on Practical Actions strengths, on the great work we do, the needs of the communities we work with, it also thinks about what we can do and learning we can bring that’s additional to the work of others.

It focuses on Technology Justice to meet our vision of a sustainable world free of poverty and injustice in which technology is used to the benefit of all.

Let me introduce you to our strategy 2012 – 17 :-

We continue to live in a world where the gap between those who have access to the technologies they need for a decent quality of life and those who don’t is a yawning chasm.

1.6 billion people have no access to electricity, 1.3 billion no access to safe water, 2.6 billion have no sanitation and 1 billion people are undernourished. Huge numbers of lives are being made poorer. We live in a world of technology injustice.

This needs to change. Over the next 5 years we will work with others towards four universal goals:
• Sustainable access to modern energy service for all by 2030
• A transition to sustainable systems of agriculture and natural resource management that provide food security and livelihoods for poor people in rural areas
• Improved access to drinking water, sanitation and waste services for poor people living in towns and cities
• Reduced risk of disasters for marginalised groups and communities

As a direct result of our work, the wellbeing of 6 million people will be improved.

As well as working directly with people through our project work we will actively share our knowledge, we will encourage people to learn from and replicate our work, and where appropriate we will use our experience to influence policy change. Over the course of the next 5 years we will scale up and share our ‘small is beautiful’ solutions delivering more than 25 cases of where at least 1 million people have benefited from an improved ability to access technologies, services, natural resources and markets, or have risks mitigated as a result of Practical Action’s knowledge, partnership and influencing work.

To achieve this large scale change we will
• Reinforce our focus on technology
• Strengthen our role as a knowledge broker
• Expand our programme work into West Africa and open a new country office in Rwanda
• Grow our income by 50% by 2017
• Recognising the value to all of our work of our expertise on markets and on climate change we will mainstream this work across all four goals
• Focus across Practical Action on a major global change priority, the first of these being energy access for all.

We know that improving people’s lives is not just about material goods. People’s material concerns relating to access to amenities and basic services, to establishing sustainable livelihoods must be met – but the way things are done is also vital. People need the opportunity for meaningful choice and the power to exercise control over their own lives, to live in dignity and have respectful relationships in their households and the wider world. Improving people’s material and relational wellbeing is fundamental to our work.

Practical Action believes in Technology Justice and our strategy sets out how we, together with people living in poverty, with partner organisations, with businesses and with governments, will help move our world towards Technology Justice.

Through this strategy we will help millions of people, we will strengthen our work, add value to the work of others and in all that we do will improve wellbeing, because people matter.

Together, we in Practical Action will help over 30 million poor people achieve positive change in their lives. We will affirm people’s right to choose and use the technologies that help them lead the kind of life they value, without compromising the ability of others and future generations to do the same.

We will change, and move – and know that we have moved our world towards Technology Justice.

We will be proud to take Practical Action.

So that’s some of the key concepts of our strategy – why do I think its important? The numbers mean something to me. I’ve worked in development, in trying to make the world a batter, fairer place for 20 years now. I’ve talked with people struggling to make a living, people living in extreme poverty who want somehing better for their kids – and the numbers arent faceless anymore. Technology because people matter.

Getting back on the bike

Dave Graham
March 24th, 2012

It started innocently enough, with an email from my friend Ned

You know we once mentioned getting out on the bikes. How abut this…. http://practicalaction.org/nightrider I’ve signed up and then stopped to think that company might be a good ideal…

I had a look at the website, checked the date on the calendar and saw that it was free.

Now, I’ve been a keen cyclist for many years. I used to commute to work on my bike regularly, as well as longer excursions out into the countryside. I live in Yorkshire after all, so there’s plenty of countryside to see! Except, what with one thing and another, it’s been quite a while since I got on a bike for anything more than a quick spin around the park with the kids.

However, it wasn’t the distance which was putting me off. 100km is a long way, true enough. But nothing which I hadn’t done before (albeit many years ago). The thing which scared me the most was the fundraising.

Different charities wanted different minimum amounts. Practical Action, Ned’s charity of choice, were looking for £250. I’ve done various events for charity before, and it’s always been the old “please will you sponsor me? Here’s my sponsor form” approach. Family & friends would hand over a couple of quid, and I’d end up raising between £50 and £100.

So, £250 was a lot of money.

I dropped Practical Action an email expressing interest, but also my concern at the amount I’d need to raise. They were lovely, and provided the reassurance I was looking for, along with a number of great fundraising ideas.

I took a deep breath, and signed up.

Fundraising started by setting up a page on Virgin Money Giving. Easy enough, took ten minutes to do. I fired off an email to my immediate work colleagues, asking if they’d sponsor me. Luckily the first couple of people were very generous, setting a healthy level for sponsors.

I also asked my employer if they’d be willing to sponsor me, which they were more than happy to do. What’s more, they said they’d match whatever funds I managed to raise! Brilliant. Now all I needed was £125 and I’d hit my target.

I started posting up messages on my Facebook wall, aimed at friends & family. Followed up with posts on Twitter (I’m a keen Twitter user!) and the donations kept coming in.

I’ve been amazed at the response. Partly I think it’s down to it being a really unusual event – not just the usual ‘doing a run for charity’, but a quite long bike ride around London, at night. People are curious about the event and want to find out more. Coupled with the brilliant Practical Action as my charity, who are doing excellent things around the world, and I’ve had no problem hitting my target. In fact it’s gone so well, I’ve had to raise my target twice!

So. In short, if you’re interested, check out the Nightrider event and especially Practical Action.

http://practicalaction.org/nightrider

There are still some places available…!

And if you would like to sponsor me, here’s my fundraising page. Let’s see if we can raise that target again!

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/dakegra

Joy in People

One of the greatest joys of working in fundraising is meeting lots of amazing people who want to do  something to change the world – whether that’s donating loose change, or running 10km and asking for sponsorship, or organising a cake sale, or setting up a charitable trust to give away larger sums of money, or climbing mountains , as some of our student supporters are doing.

Last night I was very honoured to be a guest speaker at a women only fundraising dinner in Yorkshire which was both celebrating women, and raising money for Practical Action’s work in Sudan. The room was full of over 200 women, all intelligent, funny, charming, wonderful people. Last night alone raised in excess of £7,000! And it’s all going towards a food project in rural Kassala which is helping nearly 100,000 people – some of the poorest on the planet – to make a better living from farming by giving them the tools, knowledge and skills they need to move to a life beyond poverty .  The generosity in that room was tangible. And it’s amazing to experience it. All too often it seems we’re living in the worst of times – great economic austerity, a seemingly endless war against terrorism, a government that cuts benefits from the most vulnerable while simultaneously allowing the rich to prosper. It can easy to be cynical, unmotivated, to think the worst and do absolutely nothing about it.

But the dinner last night was a perfect reminder that people are, for the most part, pretty wonderful. Tell a room of women that there are 4.2 million people in Sudan starving, and they will dig deep and donate, in the hope of making tomorrow brighter than today.

Today is also Sport Relief – and I know that millions of people up and down the country will be compelled to do something about the injustice of global poverty – whether that’s texting a donation while watching tonight’s TV show, or running the Sport Relief mile on Sunday.

Gandhi once said “be the change you wish to see in the world.” Thank God there are so many wonderful people who live their lives true to that mantra. Today my heart is full of joy because of them – thank you.  Happy Friday everyone!

Walking for water made its mark

Gemma Hume
March 22nd, 2012

I’ve never entertained the idea of getting a tattoo…until last year, at the age of 33, when I went to Mandera in north east Kenya during the height of the drought.

What I saw there shocked me.

People walking an average of 20 miles a day in 40°C just to go and fetch water. And this journey is one fraught with danger. Water is in such short supply that violence regularly breaks out at the few remaining wells – with many innocent women and children wounded or killed.

Most of the time, the water they get isn’t even clean. It’s water like this from a polluted, dirty, hand-dug well that’s infested with all kinds of visible things…worms, tadpoles, bugs:

Unsafe water like this kills 4,000 children every day…and it will continue. With climate change, the incidence of drought is increasing. People will continue to take desperate measures to get water – any water.

Practical Action is reducing the trek that people have to make to fetch water by rehabilitating shallow wells dug into seasonal river beds and building sand filters to purify the water further.

I spoke to Nadifa at one of the rehabilitated shallow wells who said she now only has to walk two kilometres to fetch water and feels much safer.

“The well helps my family so much. The water is good because it is fresh. I can drink it and use it for my cooking”.

This month, the UN announced that the international target to halve the number of people who do not have access to safe drinking water has been met, five years before the 2015 deadline.

Yet 783 million people still live without safe water.

Today, Thursday 22 March, is World Water Day – a day of the year when we spotlight the global safe water and sanitation issue and the collective efforts underway to get solutions to those struggling and in need.

The issue has made a permanent impression on me. So, here it is:

It’s my own way of honouring a cause that is close to my heart. Any nervousness or reasons to not get it done are easily overcome by the reminder that at the end of the day, I have clean water to drink.

What has made a permanent impression on you?

Blue Nile, Sudan and Practical Action

Margaret Gardner
March 21st, 2012

The Famine Early Warning Systems Network estimates that 4.2 million people mainly in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan regions of Sudan are ‘likely to be in the stressed, crisis or emergency phase of food insecurity during the first quarter of 2012’.

I visited the Blue Nile in 2009. At that stage people were hopeful that peace would come. The war between what is now Sudan and South Sudan was seemingly coming to a close and people were hopeful about the future. Don’t get me wrong there were still huge problems but people were looking forward. Some people I spoke with had been displaced by the war but had now returned to their villages.

Tagura Amir told me ‘this is my home, we have settled in this village for 22 years. We were displaced by war but now we have come back, I have been working with Practical Action and learning how to cultivate. I have passed my learning on to 50 other women so they now too know how to grow more and better crops. They like my help’.

It’s hard to contrast this optimism with the conflict and food insecurity that threatens people now.

Colleagues in Sudan tell me that large numbers of people are once again displaced into the newly created Southern Sudan, to Ethiopia and into the more urban areas of Sudan. Our office in Damazien (capital of the Blue Nile) continues to operate with staff travelling to project sites and working in those areas where they can get access – in other parts no NGOs are allowed. We are continuing as much of our work as possible – these are communities we know and support.

Many donors are reducing their funding for Sudan moving instead monies into funding the newly formed South Sudan. Inflation is high reported officially at 20% but some unofficial reports giving rates of up to 50%. There is a shortage of imported goods like medicine.

The situation is bad. But I won’t give up hope. I remember people I met battling to have hope and although now the situation looks dire – now is the time for us to work harder to help those people we can help to build and make resilient their ways of making a living, and to work together for a long term solution.

I understand that the situation is complex. If hard it takes people to work yet harder. The people I met and the others who live there should not be abandoned, there must be a way to build peace – in the meantime we will continue doing what we do best taking practical actions.

George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Lenny Henry and me

Margaret Gardner
March 21st, 2012

On Monday I was at a session looking at how we build awareness in the UK of the importance of international development. The background to this was a YouGov poll reported in The Sunday Times which showed that 66% of people questioned thought that Britain spent too much on foreign aid.
Obviously as development NGOs we have a different view – knowing for example that as a result on vaccines paid for by the UK government 1.4 million children who would have died haven’t, that’s over a million mothers who haven’t suffered the pain of the loss of a child, families who haven’t had to go without food to trying desperately to get medical help ….
I would sometimes critique how aid is applied but not that it’s necessary.
Which brings me back to George Clooney. As an add on to the session Comic Relief had turned up to talk about working with celebrities and how they can be effective if they truly have affinity with your cause (and how just occasionally they can be a nightmare). It was really informative and timely given the arrest of George Clooney for protesting against the conflict in Sudan.
George believes in what he says. Obviously the situation is more nuanced and the reports we have from our office in the area spell out both the problems and the opposing views. But I believe that interesting people in our world, getting people to talk about the big issues, seeing justice as something that is global and a care for all of us is great. And is celebs can help spark the debate and get people interested well good for them – they have the right to speak up, it’s good to see them expressing their views and maybe they/we can encourage others to be interested to.
So good for George – taking a step for something he believes so passionately in.
Harrison Ford and Lenny Henry were given as examples of people campaigning for issues they deeply believe in – so good on them too!

International womens day plus 1

Margaret Gardner
March 9th, 2012

Let’s continue celebrating women today! My friend and colleague Doris Mejia in provided this update on the struggles facing women in Peru.

Women in Peru have to face a lot of challenges, not only take care of their children, animals and farms in a context of extreme poverty and weather, but deal with machismo, violence and very few opportunities of education and personal realization. In Practical Action Latin America we´ve worked through the process of our women kamayoq (expert farmers who train other farmers)starting to find their voice, their security, their abilities and being respected for that in their communities. We hope to continue strengthening those voices so they feel happy to be who they are. We will be working, as well, to create opportunities of technical education that can be taken at their farms and that’s appropriate, works and considers their life styles and family. We are in that path right now, and we are also working closely with the government to get recognition to this kind of education – so we can reach out to even more poor communities!

The need to focus on women and technology

Susan Upton
March 8th, 2012

This International Women’s Day is all about empowering women to end hunger and poverty. Women play a vital role in food production in developing countries.  In fact, 43% of the agricultural workforce are women. Yet they have very limited access to resources such as land, credit and agricultural training and information compared to men.

I was therefore happy to attend an event in parliament on the 7^th March on ‘Effective Solutions for Agricultural Development through Empowered African Women Scientists’. The event concentrated on getting women into leadership positions within science and technology and building their skills and confidence within the agricultural sector. It also places the spotlight on the need for research into aspects of agriculture that are important and helpful to women farmers.

Woman using her technical skills to make pots in Sudan

I listened to the stories of two African women scientists, Dr Sheila Ommeh from the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya and Christine Mukantwali a senior scientist from Rwanada. Both women are AWARD (African Women in Agricultural Research and Development) fellows. Both women have invested considerable time in researching sustainable agricultural solutions to help their communities and have acted as role models for girls in local schools, encouraging them to get interested in science.

It was great to hear about the importance of getting more women into science. However, this got me thinking about the wider topic of women and technology.

Technology is a vital element for any community. It plays a significant role in food security, agriculture and small scale production. Women use technical skills and knowledge in their daily activities; they continually innovate and adapt technologies in response to things they face in their everyday lives. However, their role and technical skills are often overlooked and undervalued.

There are four main reasons why women are less visible in the application of technology than men:

• Firstly, much of women’s work is unpaid. Women have responsibilities for child care and subsistence tasks and this means it is less visible in national statistics.
• Secondly, is the cultural perception of what constitutes ‘technology’. Women carry out a considerable number of technical activities every day. For example, they farm, process crops, weave, sew, collect wood and water, tend to small livestock, fish and look after children. These activities are mostly domestic , small scale and considered un-technical.
• Thirdly, the perception of what comprises technology is mostly in the realm of ‘hard’ technology- that of equipment, like computers or machinery, but ‘soft’ technology is usually overlooked. Soft technology comprises the skills, concepts and knowledge needed to use the ‘hard’ technology. Women often have a lot of skill but use less complex equipment (e.g. in food processing).
• Fourthly, the fact that few women are involved in agricultural extension work, research and development or technical development planning has meant there has been little challenging of assumptions made about the nature of productive roles and responsibilities and assumptions that  have undermined women’s roles and technical capacities.

The spotlight on women in science should open up and include the empowerment of those women that use technology day in and day out.  Practical Action’s ‘Discovering Technologists’ training guidelines is aimed at  increasing the skills of those involved in technology development, working in the agricultural development sector.  The training is an empowering process whereby women can realize that their knowledge is not only technical but also valuable, and this realisation leads to women themselves consciously exploring, strengthening and sharing the expertise that they have.