ince 2005 the Tegemeo Women Group of Mweteni has continuously worked to ensure access to safe and sufficient water for all inhabitants of the communities of Mweteni. With the support of an increasing number of financial partners, Marie-Stella-Maris (MSM), Aqua for All, Replenish Africa Initiative and Soroptimist Club of Wassenaar, this comprehensive project is gradually being realized. 

Women for Water Partnership represented women at the Wilton Park Conference on challenges for creating resilient agricultural systems in the face of resource scarcity and climate change. Salamatu Garba Executive Director of Women Farmers Advancement Network (WOFAN), Nigeria, and WfWP representative at the conference, emphasised the importance of supporting women in their efforts to make small-holder farming climate change resilient. 

On behalf of all the women in our constituency, we thank you for your invaluable contributions to achieving water and sanitation for all.

Women for Water Partnership endorses the Wake-up Call for Action issued at the World Water Day celebration in The Hague. In this International Year for Water Cooperation, we express the hope that together we can achieve water and sanitation for all and will manage our finite water resources sustainably.

Today, the International Community meeting here in The Hague at the occasion of the International Celebration of World Water Day and Water Cooperation and the High Level Meeting on the Thematic Consultation on Water has reemphasized the centrality of water in achieving social and economic development and in protecting ecosystems. We, the member organisations of the Women for Water Partnership, call upon Governments...

Water, sharing, connecting, growth and energy are central themes in the world of MARIE-STELLA-MARIS. During their weekly ‘MEET’ they ask inspiring people what role these concepts play in their lives. This week they talked to Alice Bouman-Dentener, President of Women for Water Partnership. An inspiring portrait to read.

On March 15th the Women for Water Partnership General Assembly has elected Ms. Asha Wamuthoni Abdulrahman as SC-Member (Africa) of Women for Water Partnership for a term of 3 years. She is currently the Vice-President of the Soroptimist International of Europe (SI/E), responsible for the African Continent, Extension, Rwanda Marathon, and African Projects Management and member of the Restricted Board of the SIE Federation.

Women for Water Partnership member organisation WOFAN (WOmen's Farmers Advancement Network) supports women in Northern Nigeria in addressing water; sanitation and hygiene (WASH) related challenges in their communities.

Next to providing access to adequate water and sanitation, the project has empowered women to participate in water and sanitation activities.

The Netherlands is host country for the international celebration of World Water Day (WWD) on 22 March 2013. The event this year highlights water cooperation, in keeping with 2013 being the UN International Year of Water Cooperation.

Women's transition from water carriers to water managers. Women for Water Partnership 2012 at a glance: many highlights to celebrate. Despite restricted financial means, Women for Water Partnership can look back on an active and fruitful 2012.

WfWP President Alice Bouman-Dentener performed the opening address of the 8 March celebration of FAM - center of expertise for womenaffairs, The Netherlands. The central theme this year was women's power for development. FAM Director, Charlotte van Dijk explained the relevance of this theme which includes solidarity between women of the developed and the developing world.

Women for Water Partnership actively contributed to the Post-2015 Water Consultations co-organised by the governments of Switzerland and The Netherlands together with UN-Water, and hosted by UNECE in Geneva. H.E. Sarah Ochekpe, Minister of Water Resources of Nigeria, and WfWP agreed on the importance of women's civil society in sustainable water management.

This month Women for Water Partnership (WfWP) became a member of Global Water Challenge (GWC). Statement from Global Water Challenge CEO Monica Ellis: "We are very excited to have the Women for Water Partnership as the newest member of Global Water Challenge."

Tegemeo Women Group (TWG) is happy to report that after months of hard work, the rainwater harvesting system of the Mweteni hospital is ready. This will bring water for the patients and relieves the burden of the hospital personnel who have been struggling with the water supply for daily needs for so many years. 

Make Women’s voice(s) heard! Provide your comments to contribute shaping the post-2015 development agenda by signing in at World we want.

Current consultation (28 January – 4 February): Water Governance: People, Power and Politics. The Women for Water Partnership calls upon all member organizations and individual women to input your experiences, discussion thoughts, opinions and visions.

Mutual trust and understanding the real needs of communities have been emphasised as key factors for successful water cooperation by the participants of the International UN-Water Conference on water cooperation which took place from 8 to 10 January in Zaragoza, Spain. President Alice Bouman-Dentener participated on behalf of the Women for Water Partnership and presented the case of the Ayeyarwaddy RIver Basin in Myanmar where inclusive water governance with the participation of Women and Youth as key stakeholders is pursued.

Provide your comments to contribute shaping the post-2015 development agenda by signing in at World we want.

Dublin Principle 3: Women play a central role in the provision, management and safeguarding of water. The Women for Water Partnership calls upon all member organizations and individual women in our vast networks to input your experiences, discussion thoughts, opinions and visions in this post-2015 process!

The overall objective of the project is to secure long-term safe water and sanitation services to village communities in Southern Bulgaria through development of two pilot Water and Sanitation Safety Plans (WSSPs) – one for a model upstream community and one for a model downstream community.

The Heikeyu gravitiy system in Mweteni in Tanzania, a project of our member organisation Tegemeo Women Group, has been selected by Marie Stella Maris as the first project to be funded under their water sharing scheme. Marie-stella-Maris is a new Dutch brand for bottled drinking water. Their goals is to create sustainability in their bottled water supply and to contribute to clean and safe drinking water for everyone. By ‘drinking water from Marie-Stella-Maris, you share water’ 15% of the revenue of each bottle they sell goes to a project in the developing world.

World Youth Parliament for Water and Women for Water Partnership cooperate to bring to the fore the role of Youth in achieving water and sanitation for all. WfWP President Alice Bouman-Dentener was invited by the World Youth Parliament for Water to address the role of Youth as Major Group in society in the common goal of providing safe drinking water and adequate sanitation for all.

Ararat Valley in Armenia is a major agricultural zone and a wetlands eco-system. The communities targeted by this AWHHE project are at risk of contamination of their drinking water as well as losing access to irrigation water for their farms. Help give these villages a say and a voice in the decision-making process leading to sustainable water management. Support this project!

Honorable Rejoyce Mabudafhasi, Deputy Minister for Water & Environmental Affairs of South Africa, spoke with WfWP President Alice Bouman-Dentener at the latest Stockholm Water Week. She reconfirmed her commitment to Women Leadership and declared her support to the Women and Water Summit for Africa that WfWP has been pursuing since 2010.

At Stockholm Water Week 2012, WfWP President Alice Bouman-Dentener formally handed the WfWP report on the Women’s Initiative of the 6th World Water Forum to Dr. Eun-kyung Park, President of the Korea Water Forum and Ambassador-at-Large for Water Resources of Korea. Dr. Park confirmed her commitment to women leadership in water and her interest in working with the Women for Water Partnership in this regard.

Women for Water congratulates her Steering Committee member Kusum Athukorala on winning the 2012 Women in Water Award for Leadership Development. “Kusum is a pioneer woman in the water sector”, WfWP’s President Alice Bouman-Dentener comments. “Winning the Women in Water Award is a much deserved acknowledgement of her work.” Based in Sri Lanka, Ms Athukorala is a multidisciplinary skilled researcher and advocacy specialist.

The Katosi Women Development Trust in Uganda has won a number of awards with their Water, Hygiene and Sanitation program. We have just uploaded their latest project, concerning the empowerment of rural women and their access to WASH. If you want to be a part of their success, you can. Support this project! It needs € 10,892 funding.

Women for Water Partnership has been honoured to open UNESCO-IHE's photo exhibition Women, Water and Wells. Mariet Verhoef-Cohen, past-President of Soroptimist International of Europe and currently their programme manager for Africa represented WfWP in this event. Read all about renowned photographer Gil Garcetti's beautiful pictures and their link to Women for Water Partnership's work.

On opening day of Stockholm Water Week 2012, WfWP President Alice Bouman-Dentener will address empowerment of Women as key denominator to achieving water and sanitation for all in Africa. Her contribution is titled Gender indicators for women’s empowerment strategies in water and food security.

Women for Water Partnership (WfWP), as the leading global women civil society network on water and sanitation, organized the women’s initiative for the 6^th World Water Forum. This report summarizes the outputs and outcomes of the combined efforts of the Women for Water Partnership and its partner organizations participating in the Women’s Initiative.

Women for Water resides near the Peace Palace in The Hague, in the Bertha von Suttner building. Bertha von Suttner was a peace activist worth to be remembered. We've made it easy for you to discover just how remarkable she was.

Ms. Diana Iskreva is the new Treasurer of the Women for Water Partnership. At her appointment, she said: "I am decided to put all my skills and capacity into assisting the Partnership and each of its members in gaining position for the bringing about of high-quality water-related services to all women, men and children we are serving in our respective countries."

The latest NetWwater project is a training and empowerment program for women community leaders involved in water resources management at grassroots level in rural Sri Lanka. “We plan for eight such programs by March 2013, including at least three programs in the former conflict areas”, NetWwater chair Kusum Athukorala says. “Discussions on gender and water, female headed households (23% in Sri Lanka right now), water quality and alternate irrigation for home gardens will take over where once mortars, land mines and AK47s reigned.”

The Women for Water Partnership congratulates the Katosi Women Development Trust (KWDT) on winning the 'Women's Rio+20 Good Practice Award, in Water and Sanitation'. It is their second prize in just a short span of time, since they also won the Kyoto award at the 6th World Water Forum held in March. If you want to know what makes them special, please do read on.

Focusing on the idea of training the trainers, three hundred university students were trained to further educate more than fifty thousand primary school students in water awareness and management. With initial inspiration and concluding performance from women's organizations, the project showcased the central role of women in raising awareness about putting the ideal of social equity in the foreground as one of the main pillars of Integrated Water Resources Management to ensure water and sanitation for all.

Did you visit the online forum of the Women's Major Group for Rio+20 yet? It is a space for collecting views and perspectives from women around the world! So why not share yours?

Join the Women on the Road to Rio+20 Ning (follow link) or Facebook page (follow link) and invite your friends too. By the way, the Women's Major Group has its own webpage on the Rio+20 website (follow link).

As part of the interview series on Water in Rio+20 by the UN-Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and Communication, WfWP President Alice Bouman-Dentener was interviewed.

"Water = Life", Ms Bouman-Dentener said. "We all know that. We should stop questioning and debating the obvious. Given the fact that so many millions on our globe still lack access to this life bringing resource, we should use our time and energy to solve that problem by putting the vast number of already agreed principles into practice. Let us please move from vision to action."

>> Download the interview here ( 360 kB)

WfWP co-organized the Rio+20 side-event titled ‘Transboundary waters, climate change and good governance: what role for the UN Watercourses Convention (UNWC)?’ together with the governments of Finland, Nigeria and Norway, Green Cross International, the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

WfWP helped prep the Dutch government's special Women's delegate for Rio+20, Jolein Baidenmann, and briefed her on the pivotal and central role of women in sustainable development. Ever since 1946, WfWP member NVR (the Netherlands Women's Council) has been trusted to selecting and prepare the government's special Women's delegate.

Women for Water Partnership (WfWP) is actively involved in (the run up to) Rio+20. For those who are not up to speed yet: a short explanation on what Rio+20 is, excactly.

Women for Water Partnership has a new office.
We have moved to the premises for international NGOs that are an initiative of the City of the Hague to facilitate the NGO community within their borders. We are located at Laan van Meerdervoort 70, at the back of the Peace Palace. You are welcome to come visit us!

During their visit to Tanzania Alice Bouman and Lesha Witmer finalized the official registration per 4 May 2012 of Women for Water in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

"Let’s get together to fix the hole in the bucket" was the slogan of the two key events, organized by the Women for Water Partnership (WfWP) on the occasion of the 6th World Water Forum in Marseille, France. Both events highlighted the central role of women in the provision, management and safeguarding of water and contributed to the Forum with clear commitments and solutions. Also, Women for Water together with Green Cross and Global Peace Women through posters presented the work of women in water related projects in (potential and post) conflict areas.

In developing countries, especially in rural areas, water is the way to a woman’s heart. It is also the path to her empowerment and economic development. Ultimately, that path leads to a better life for everyone in her family and community.

Help us forge a path to water and safe sanitation for women, their families and their communities all over the world. Support Women for Water Partnership. Help us make the next International Women's Day a happier day for ever more women around the world. Thank you!

When moving from vision to action / from policies to implementation, the principal actors change. On the eve of World Water Forum 6 we, the Women for Water Partnership, would like to share our concerns with all stakeholders at the forum: There is a hole in the bucket! Read all about what it takes to plug that hole.

Women for Water Partnership's messages related to the 6^th World Water Forum are available for you here.

“The 6^th World Water Forum takes place at a time where water related crises are heightened by impacts of climate change. To ensure that communities are strengthened to stand up to these challenge we must make sure to involve the half of humanity which is usually ignored, namely women. Women's voices must be heard, considered and respected at every level in order to ensure sustainability in the water sector." Words taken from our heart and spoken by Hon Dinesh Gunawardena, Minister of Water Supply and Drainage and Chief Government Whip, Sri Lanka. Continue reading, for that is not all he said...

In preparation for the 6^th World Water Forum, Women for Water Partnership (WfWP) is organizing a preparatory meeting in order to unite women and their organizations participating in the Forum, to exchange experiences of prior Fora with newcomers, and to facilitate concerted action as women’s Major Group. The pre-conference will be held in Marseille from March 10^th – 11^th 2012. On the 14^th of March, the results of the pre-conference will be presented and discussed during a high level special event at the Forum itself.

Women for Water has joined forces with others in an International NGO's Water Coalition called the Butterfly Effect. The coalition, which presently counts 80 organizations worldwide, was launched in order to enable, mobilize and facilitate meaningful NGO, CSO and grassroots participation in the 6^th World Water Forum. WWF6 takes place in Marseille from 12 to 17 March 2012.

The way to a woman's heart is through water

In developing countries, especially in rural areas, water is the way to a woman’s heart. It is also the path to her empowerment and economic development. Ultimately, that path leads to a better life for everyone in her family and community.

Help us forge a path to water and safe sanitation for women, their families and their communities all over the world. Support Women for Water Partnership.

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW56) will convene in New York from 27 February to 9 March 2012. The theme 'Empowerment of Rural Women and their role in the eradication of poverty and hunger' is very much at the heart of the work of Women for Water Partnership and its member organisations. And the review theme 'financing for women’s development' is a major area of concern. It is our please to share with you a special video message on Women Leadership, by Honourary Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues. “Women have a critical leadership role to play in sustainable development, particularly in regards to access to clean water and sanitation”, she says, and that is just the beginning of her message. Be sure to listen to the rest of it too.

As strategic partner of UN-Water, the Women for Water Partnership closely interacts with the UN Water Secretariat in the preparation for the World Summit Rio+20 in June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro. In this context, WfWP President Alice Bouman-Dentener addressed women’s role in water and food security during the UN Water panel on the opening day of the Bonn nexus conference.

"Donor funding is no longer necessary for this project", Anna Tsetkova writes on behalf of WfWP-member MAMA-86. "Therefore, we suggest transferring the funding so far donated to support safe drinking water at Kharkiv schools to the Mweteni WatSan centre project of our sister organisation in Tanzania." MAMA-86's very succesful school projects are spinning-off in a major way. State budgets have been allocated for the implementation of the safe water for (pre-)school children projects regionally, making additional financial backing for this project through WfWP and AKVO no longer necessary. Congratulations from all of us at WfWP!

Joining our fundraising activity, are you? Wonderful! You can download the document to stick to your bathroom door right here. In English and in Dutch.

Today, November 19th, is World Toilet Day. About 2.6 billion people have no proper sanitation. It is about time that this situation is changed. But how do you get funding for your WASH and WATSAN projects in this day and age? WfWP turns to an unconventional solution.

Right at this moment, the Bonn Nexus Conference is taking place. The multi-day conference examines the nexus of water, energy and food security in the run-up to Rio+20 next year. WfWP’s Chair Alice Bouman-Dentener was a panellist in one of UN-Water's special events.

WfWP is a member of the European Water Stewardship (EWS) steering committee and has supported the development of the EWS Launch “A vision becomes reality”. WfWP’s Lesha Witmer will participate as a panellist at the Launch, which is to be held in Brussels on the 24th of November 2011.

The International Conference 'Community and Water Services; challenges for sustainability', was held from September 29th through October 1st in Kandy, Sri Lanka. The conference, the first of its kind in the region, brought together ministers, local authorities, academia and executives from the water sector with 300 delegates from community based organisations to discuss the conditions for sustainable use and maintenance of decentralized water systems in rural environments. The Women for Water Partnership was invited to contribute the knowledge and expertise of women and their organizations active in this field.

Women for Water Partnership was well represented at the Stockholm Water Week in August 2011. Three WfWP steering committee members were active during several sessions. Apart from that, they took part in bilateral conversations with partners and networking activities. Read all about WfWP's Key Messages To Take Home as stated by Chair Alice Bouman-Dentener, about Kusum Athukorala's involvement in the WWAP Advisory Group on Gender Equality and Lesha Witmer's participation in the panel on Water Stewardship.

NetWwater conducted a series of rainwater harvesting projects for small hospitals and medical posts in the Central province of Sri Lanka. This project started as a direct result from the regional working conference of Women for Water in Sri Lanka in 2009. To date, NetWwater and its partners installed rainwater harvesting tanks for 11 hospitals and one gravity system and trained the personnel of the hospital on maintenance and use before handover. The project so far supplies more than 516,000 patients and 338,000 out-patients with safe water. Plans are being made for scaling-up the project. The success of the project triggered a further 22 applications.

Home gardening has become a popular activity among the women of Mau Ara in Sri Lanka as a means of attaining self sustainability in cultivating vegetables, perennial crops, fruits, and ornamental plants that earn them an additional income by sale of the excess produce.

This development will contribute to a change of mindset and attitude in traditional communities who will be sensitized through women’s enhanced economic and intellectual status.

Friday 16 September was the last day of the TGNP Gender Festival 2011 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. WfWP member TGNP organised and facilitated three days of Water and Energy workshops and fellow WfWP member Tegemeo Women Group (TWG) of Mweteni was one of the participants. They showcased their experience in developing and implementing their ongoing Water Supply and Sanitation project. The graphic presentation of their success story was received with much enthousiasm.

WfWP's small grant system enabled The Tegemeo Women Group in Mweteni, Tanzania to outfit their Water/Information centre with modern means of communication. The formarly hard to reach group can soon be communicated with through email and Skype, which is a long way from the once in a while phone calls and 'snail mail' of before.

 

In this paper gender differences in water carrying are considered and data about water access and carrying summarized from 44 countries that participated in the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) program.

Are you taking advantage of your summer holidays to read up? Well, consider taking this with you: "How to Lobby at International Conferences (for Dummies)” [ 460 kB]. At just 16 sparsely printed pages, you can easily read it in (under) half an hour.

The third Africa Conference on Hygiene and Sanitation is held July 19-21 in Rwanda, and is jointly convened an hosted by the Government of Rwanda and the African Minister's Council on Water (AMCOW). AfricaSan 3 aims to support African countries to meet the Millennium Development Goal for sanitation and hygiene. It addresses the singular challenge of scaling up access to improved sanitation services for more than 400 million people in Africa.

Women for Water Partnership signed a petition that will be handed to representatives of the government of The Netherlands today: World Water Day. The petition urges the Dutch government to make sure that, despite major budgetary cutbacks, water and sanitation for developing countries will remain high on its priorities list.

If you did not do it yet, please take a minute to read the message we sent out on 8 March, International Women's Day. If you support women’s cause, kindly pass on our message and think of one concrete thing to do for us:

• Spread the message to decision makers at national and international levels
• Include WfWP or its member organizations in your work and/or support their projects (www.womenforwater.org)
• And make sure it is about women's participation (not just about gender mainstreaming)

It is working already. We've spotted our message on several websites, from The Netherlands (VAM foundation) to Suriname (Projekta). We hope many organisations follow their lead. Thank you in advance for your support.

In many parts of the world, women and girls are responsible for water, sanitation and hygiene in their households. Therefore, it is crucial that they are actively included in the design and management of interventions. TheWaterChannel shows videos to illustrate that.

In Mwihoko area, about 125 km north-west of Nairobi, a rainwater harvesting project is being put into place that will secure safe drinking water for rural women and their families. No longer will women and girls have to walk or cycle for hours in order to fetch contaminated river water which, next to a fluoride-contaminated community borehole, is their only source of drinking water.

Thanks to the efforts of Women for Water Partnership, Soroptimists Kenya and Melania Women Foundation, the rainwater harvesting project of Mwihoko Women Organisation has been financed by the Eureko Achmea foundation.

The Murumba Primary school water and sanitation project exceeds expectations. Some 700 schoolchildren and 15 teachers now have access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation facilities. Also, 420 people were trained on water management and sanitation.

A big thank you from Women for Water Partnership and Soroptimists club Kisumu Winam to Aqua for All, Bas and Frida and all other individual funders who kindly contributed to the project via AKVO.org.

WfWP member NetWwater succesfully co-organised the event: A Voice for Water, A Voice for Women. The conference on Water Security and Climate Change for South Asian Women was held in Sri Lanka on Februari 2, 2011.

Over the festive season, you may not have had the time or possibility to check out our website. Therefore, we bring you up to speed by listing some inspiring new additions, like:

  Did you know the Katosi Women's Group won the first prize, being the best farmer group exhibitor at the 29^th World Food Day exhibition? Read all about it!

The Ugly Tale of the Climate Change Monster

This tale tells the story of how climate change affects agriculture and the daily lives of small holders in Africa and around the globe. The tale was inspired by 'There's a hole in the bucket...', the side-event Women for Water organized during 'Down 2 Earth', the global conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change 2010. Read all about it...

On Tuesday 2 November, from 13.00 to 15.00 hours, Women for Water Partnership (WfWP) organizes a side-event on the 2010 global conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (AFC conference). In this side-event WfWP members share with participants the experience and knowledge of women facing problems in water management and food security due to the effects of the climate change.

While attending the World Water Week in Stockholm, Women for Water expressed its support to the call for bringing the UN Watercourses Convention into force by 2011.

Women for Water having recently joined their Board of Advice, the European Water Partnership published a double interview with WfWP's Alice Bouman-Dentener and Lesha Witmer.

Women for Water Partnership recently joined the Board of Advice of the European Water Partnership. Since February 2009, WfWP has been strategic partner of Aquawareness. Project manager Agnes Biesiekierska: "We are delighted to intensify our already ongoing joint activities with Women for Water to a deepened fruitful collaboration."

August 18th, 2010 - Women for Water joins the People to People initiative for Pakistan, raising funds for women's organizations working on the ground in Pakistan. Women for Water urges you to take part in this People to People campaign.

August 4th, 2010 - By a vote of 122 in favour to none against and 41 abstentions, the General Assembly on the 28th of July 2010 adopted a resolution declaring “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights”.