From August 23 – Sept 1, Project Maji core team attended World Water Week 2022 held in Stockholm. The annual global conference is hosted each year by Stockholm International Water Institute. This year the theme was Valuing Water: Seeing the Unseen. Under this theme, World Water Week served as a platform to bring people from around the world to understand how water is valued differently by different groups. Read on if you wish to know more about the event:
Project Maji Supports #RunBlue for Clean Water
When someone has ran across the world waving the flag for clean water, it’s easy to focus on their achievements and forget the process. But we know the journey of impact is anything but comfortable.
While in Stockholm, to attend World Water Week 2022, we met Mina Guli, the superstar clean water advocate and ultra-runner who runs to bring to light the global water crisis. Our Director Partnerships, Wieke De Vries, joined Mina on a 2km to celebrate her 85th Marathon during the #RunBlue Campaign. For this campaign, Mina has vowed to run 200 marathons in one year to push water scarcity up in the global policy agenda. Much like each time we see Mina, we felt inspired by her experiences forging resilience and joy in the face of a stubborn water crisis.
More about World Water Week 2022
The week-long event hosted each year by Stockholm International Water Institute is the leading conference on global water issues. World Water Week is the place to explore new ways of managing water and tackle humanity’s greatest challenges: from food security and health to agriculture, technology, biodiversity, and climate. The theme for the event this year was ‘Valuing Water: Seeing the Unseen’ and the goal was to bring people from around the world to understand how water is valued differently by different groups, communities and individuals. Within the overall theme of “Seeing the unseen: The value of water”, the sessions were grouped under three theme headings:
· The value of water for people and development
· The financial and economic value of water
· The value of water for nature and climate
We were in attendance
For Project Maji, World Water Week presented a brilliant opportunity to meet stakeholders from around the world, and from all kinds of different backgrounds. Yet all of them had one thing in common: the passion to make clean water a reality for everyone! While there might be varying views on how this can be achieved, our team identified a distinct appreciation amongst sector experts for paid access to clean water. In line with the Maji model, there was an emphasis on charging a minimal amount for rural water services to ensure the longevity and sustainability of waterpoints.
Our Founder & CEO, Sunil Lalvani, shares his thoughts on this in this video message:
We are grateful for the support that our peers have expressed for our work. But more importantly, credit goes to our dedicated team who have facilitated exponential growth for our work and added to the goodwill that we enjoy in the rural water space.
Finally, please accept our gratitude for your unrelenting support, from your donations to your likes and shares, we could not have come this far without a community of good people like you.