TSKI Celebrates World Water Day.
Taytay Sa Kauswagan, Inc (TSKI) launched its first World Water Day campaign, “Tubig, Buhay at Kalikasan” or “Water, Life, and Environment."
TSKI branches throughout Philippines conducted activities for TSKI staff and clients to bring the campaign theme to life.
TSKI also circulated informational material to its branch offices on wastewater management and tips for conserving water at home.
Staff members also gave talks highlighting the importance of water conservation and proper water management with client households and the local community members.
TSPI World Water Day Celebration TSPI celebrated their first World Water Day this year by hosting three interactive activities: a social media awareness campaign led by branch staff, a slogan contest, and a poster contest.
Building off of UN’s 2017 World Water Day theme “Why wastewater?” staff members were encouraged to share their ideas on reusing wastewater on Facebook with the hashtag #WhyWastewater, and develop slogans and artwork posters to help bring the 2017 theme to life.
CEVI Joins World Water Day Celebrations Community Economic Ventures, Inc. (CEVI), based in the Philippines, joined the World Water Day Celebration by having a quick tour at Bohol Water Utilities, Inc. (BWUI).
To participate this year’s theme, CEVI staff went meatless for a day as their way of reducing wastewater.
Studies found that growing and consuming meat products require more water compared to grains and vegetables.

Before PDAM Batang provided piped water to the residents of Mount Tumpeng, Malekah, Sumiyati, and Sungkono used to plan their days around collecting water.
"After washing clothes, we also take a bath.
This is normal around here, "she said.
Sumiyati and her husband rode their motorcycle approximately 4 kilometers to the river to collect drinking and cooking water.
When the river water turns muddy during the drought, he too would have to look for water too.
"This program is very helpful for PDAM Batang to help people who need clean water.
It is not cheap to connect pipelines into challenging geographic areas like Mount Tumpeng,” explains Director of PDAM Batang, Yulianto.
Through WaterConnect program, PDAM provides affordable loans to get access to clean water through a pipeline network managed by PDAM Batang.
Residents can take loan facility up to IDR 600,000 for six months and 0% interest repayment term.
Sumiyati and Sungkono does not feel itchy anymore, because now they can have clean water flowing directly into their house.

NWTF’s Marketing Channels.
The Negros Women for Tomorrow Foundation (NWTF), a partner MFI in the Philippines, utilizes several opportunities to market their WASH products.
NWTF has a specific team devoted for WASH education, orientation, product presentations, and other WASH-related activities, named the Green Product Staff (GPS).
The GPS team attends around 2 to 3 center meetings each day, with each center assembly having around to 30 to 50 MFI members.
During these center meetings, the GPS team promotes WASH products while continue their health and hygiene campaign.
These short talks advocate for safe health & hygiene practices and talk about the advantages of having quality water and sanitation facilities.
NWTF also uses its Branch Foundation Days to further promote WASH products.
Foundation Days are celebrations held by each branch on its founding day and it typically attending by most of the branch’s 2,500 to 3,000 members.
On Foundation Day, the GPS team sets up a booth to showcase water filters, sanitary toilets, and water connection while also answering questions and sharing additional information on the featured products.
NWFT’s continuous and multi-level marketing campaign has been successful in reaching more Filipinos with water and sanitation needs.

Financing and supply chain collaboration.
With more than 60 active partners globally, Water.org takes an individualistic approach with each partnership design and implementation.
In addition each supply chain often has sub-components such as raw material providers (cement, sand, etc.)
and input producers (squat pans, doors, rings, etc.).
When a financial organization chooses to partner with a supply chain provider, the relationship can take many forms.
For instance, the financial organization can offer an optional referral service for customers who receive a water and sanitation loan.
Households are also offered a turn-key option which allows them to rely on a pre-qualified vendor for much of their solution.
By partnering with Svadha, households can receive the benefits of access to affordable products, authentic quality, product variety to accommodate different preferences and physical requirements, convenience, customization, access to accurate knowledge, and sustained support such as toilet insurance to protect a household’s investment from accidents and disasters.
If the need arises, Svadha also provides services to financial organizations that can include community engagement, micro business establishment and other holistic water and sanitation lending support services.
While some financial lenders may be uncertain about partnering with a water and sanitation service provider, Water.org has helped facilitate and underwrite several successful partnerships.

Access to piped water increased in absolute number from 82 million urban dwellers with piped water in 2000 to 124 million in 2015, but the urban population served with piped water on the premises declined from 40 to 33 percent over the same period.
[1] The total population with improved sanitation services increased, and many countries in the region were able to meet their MDG goals, but most of that increase came from an increase in the access to piped water off premises and self-supply.
Only 30 percent of Africans have access to improved wastewater services, and more than 23 percent are practicing open defecation (Ibid.).
In addition, a vast majority of the African utilities do not provide wastewater services, and some that did in 2000-2006 dropped wastewater collection services due to high costs and technical difficulties.
Their performance showed some improvements between 2010 and 2013.
Access to sewer services is in its infancy in Africa — with very few utilities providing such services.
We used several measures of utility performance (looking at financial performance, operational performance and customer performance) and in general, we found that utilities are performing below global benchmarks.
Performance is also dependent on cost.
We found that the O&M costs of water services between 2010 and 2013 have been accompanied by an increase in the affordability of water services.
In the case of the World Bank, that will mean more attention to the efficiency of water sector investments, and the incentive structures in place that may affect utility performance.

It’s not all about toilets: Debunking 7 myths about urban sanitation on World Water Day.
[1] Myth #2: Poor people are not willing to pay for sanitation services In fact: Poor people are willing to pay for sanitation services, and they do, even when they receive sub-standard services.
Investments needs are huge — 40% of estimated funds needed to extend universal access to safely managed water, sanitation and hygiene are needed for urban sanitation.
Myth #4: Investing in urban sanitation is not productive In fact: Sanitation investments provide demonstrated health, economic, social and environmental benefits that are essential to turn cities into vibrant economic centers.
Myth #6: Solving urban sanitation is all about toilets In fact: Providing access to a toilet, a latrine or a sewer connection is only part of the solution.
The full sanitation service chain needs to be sustainably managed.
Myth #7: Sanitation produces waste that is a nuisance to be eliminated In fact: Human waste contains valuable nutrients.
We must develop locally relevant and innovative solutions along the sanitation service chain that put customers first and focus as much on service management as on technology.
City planners and other sector decision makers should consider the tradeoffs along the service chain between, for example, providing basic access to a toilet to all versus providing sewers and advanced wastewater treatment to the few.
Debunking these myths is part of our effort to help sanitation sector professionals in transforming their thinking and practices to deploy both old and new solutions in smarter ways to achieve sustainable, equitable and safe management of excreta for a whole city.

The Indian government has honored its pledge to ensure rural people across four Cambodian provinces get desperately needed access to clean water.
Rural Development Minister Ouk Rabun told an inauguration ceremony in Tbong Khmum that the $12m grant had been promised in 2011 at the request of the Cambodia government.
Mr. Rabun said as many as half of all people in rural areas still do not have access to clean water and providing it was vital to improving their health.
“Cambodia and India have a close relationship,” he said, adding that India provided grant aid and cooperated with Cambodia in many areas.
“We are both developing countries and many Indian people live in rural areas.
India will continue to provide assistance to Cambodia as you need it.” One man who attended yesterday’s ceremony was 62-year-old Chranh Rith, a villager from Tunlung commune, who celebrated the arrival of the hand pumps.
“Before I drank water from the well, river or creek,” he said.
“There was no hygiene.
The water was filthy and contained the faeces of cows and buffalos.
“Now I’m so happy us villagers can use these hand pumps.

2 Billion People Drink Contaminated Water, Says WHO.
The most serious threats are in impoverished and developing areas.
Although there has been a push for safe drinking water by the UN General Assembly, which led to a 4.9 percent increase in budgets worldwide, most countries say it is not enough.
The report found that 80 percent of countries are not adequately meeting the UN standards.
In a statement WHO said when people can’t provide the most basic necessities, like repairing infrastructure, water safety and reliability is sacrificed first.
"This is a challenge we have the ability to solve," Guy Ryder, chair of UN-Water and director-general of the International Labour Organization, said.
"Increased investments in water and sanitation can yield substantial benefits for human health and development, generate employment and make sure that we leave no one behind."
This is a heavy burden on local communities, but as Ryder said, it is possible.
To really meet UN standards, the world budget for drinking water would have to triple, that’s $114 billion annually, to provide underserved areas.
Governments can also step up their game by increasing and sustaining WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) access for vulnerable groups, especially in rural areas.

With his upcoming visit to East Chicago, Indiana, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has a critical opportunity to make good on his confirmation statement—that EPA should have “acted faster” in Flint—by stepping in to ensure that residents throughout East Chicago have reliable access to drinking water that is not contaminated by lead.
The petition highlights an EPA pilot study at East Chicago’s Superfund site that EPA has concluded indicates a system-wide problem with elevated lead in East Chicago’s drinking water.
It was only after EPA flagged major inadequacies in the lead corrosion control treatment used by East Chicago that the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) asked the City to change its water treatment in early fall 2016.
His article on polyphosphates and lead, funded by the American Water Works Association (AWWA), states in the first sentence that “Hexametaphosphate tends to increase the release of both soluble and particulate forms of lead in drinking water.” A subsequent 2005 guide from the AWWA on lead and copper rule corrosion control treatment cites the 2002 Edwards article, putting forth that “[p]olyphosphates and sodium hexametaphosphate are sequestering agents and may be effective for the control of iron and manganese, but are not recommended for the control of lead and copper.” When confronted with IDEM’s approval of the city’s use of hexametaphosphate, an IDEM spokesperson “could not comment” on whether the agency was aware of the 2002 Edwards study when it approved the City’s permit 7 years later.
Clearly EPA oversight of East Chicago’s corrosion control treatment is needed moving forward.
While Superfund residents should receive priority in the water contamination response, residents throughout the city need relief from the systemic lead problem with their drinking water—and they need it now.
In January, IDEM made claims in an email to EPA that the study identified only “an isolated location in the distribution that had a low amount of [lead corrosion control treatment].” This despite evidence that flow conditions at the sample sites were sufficient to distribute corrosion control treatment, with low flow issues potentially impacting only a small percentage of samples.
Residents of the Superfund site are rightfully receiving state-sponsored water filters—installation of which has *finally* begun four months after the EPA study results were made public, and long after volunteer efforts were underway – and are slated for publicly-funded replacement of their lead service lines.
However, government agencies have committed little to no assistance to ensure that residents of the rest of the city currently have a clean source of drinking water.
If the City and State cannot or will not stake the steps necessary to ensure a safe drinking water supply, then EPA can and should step in so that all residents receive bottled water and effective filters now, and properly treated water and new service lines later down the road.

Liberia: The Shocking Truth About Our Drinking Water.
On March 22, 2017, during the observance of World Water Day, UNICEF reported that by 2040, one in four children worldwide will be living in areas with extreme limited water resources, a realization that has already affected many children living in Liberia.
One of the major challenges in communities that have no access to functioning water supplies and functioning sewage systems, is drinking from contaminated or poisoned (chlorine) drinking wells; something that is done unintentionally.
According to the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC), one of the chemicals that is used and is accessible in the market to clear the bacteria and germs caused by nature’s natural microbes is chlorine, a chemical which, in its natural form, is a greenish-yellow gas and has a strong smell that is used as bleach, oxidizing agent and to disinfect in water during purification.
Presently in Liberia and many parts of the world, chlorine is normally sold in small water bottles filled with its powder residue, and sometimes the poisonous gas liquid.
It is sold as little as US$3 and without any questions from the consumer; they are told to drop it in their wells and to wait three days before drinking from them.
According to UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, during the observance of World Water Day, "water is elemental; without it, nothing can grow.
Meanwhile, a family in Caldwell recalls that during the Ebola period many women and children became ill and lost their lives from drinking from contaminated or ‘poisoned’ wells.
"People would drink a cup and start vomiting; and before two or three days, die from stomach challenges," the family added.
It is proven that when chlorine gas comes into contact with moist body tissues such as the eyes, throat, and lungs, an acid is produced that can damage these tissues and causes: blurred vision; burning pain, redness, and blisters on the skin if exposed to gas.