End Water Poverty (EWP) continues to support diverse civil society action at local and national level through the Claim Your Water Rights campaign. The coalition received 35 applications for funding during a recent open call, selecting four proposals that reflect the geographic spread of the coalition’s membership as well as a variety of thematic focuses and rights claiming strategies:
- Center for Law and Justice (CLJ) will continue their ‘Vote for Water’ campaign in Lahore, employing research, lobbying, social media, and public mobilisation to hold politicians accountable for pledges made during Pakistan’s recent elections.
- Institute of Social Research and Development (ISRD) will challenge social stigma around menstruation and promote people’s right to manage their periods safely and with dignity in Manipur, India. ISRD will work with women’s networks to establish a collective voice to promote menstrual management and gender equality through the ‘Removing the taboos, removing the barriers’ campaign.
- National Association of Youth Organisations (NAYO) will support Youth Water and Climate Justice hubs to promote decentralised community organising and activism in Chitungwiza, collaborating closely with Zimbabwe’s National Human Rights Commission to defend the rights to water and sanitation.
- Four EWP members – African Humanity Initiative, Millennium Community Development Initiative (MCDI), Small Water Providers Association (SWAPAK), and Women Collective Kenya (WCK) – will join forces to resist privatisation and repression of civic space in Nairobi, Kenya. The consortium will conduct a public pressure campaign to block the ratification of a bill that would enable water privatisation, while promoting the realisation of people’s right to water through strengthened regulation and local government intervention.
Our primary aim during this round of grants was to spread funding across different regions, strategies, and themes, while selecting at least one proposal that aligned strongly with the theme of ‘Feminism and Women’s Rights’. Four of the seven grantees haven’t previously received Claim Your Water Rights funding. EWP also has active funding agreements with members in Malawi, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, and Thailand.
We are grateful to all members who submitted proposals. As part of the review process, the secretariat has provided specific feedback to unsuccessful applicants that we hope will prove helpful for future submissions to EWP and other funders. We plan to open calls for funding again in early 2025. In the meantime, if you would like to learn more about the campaign or get inspired by other members’ achievements, please read our Lessons from Claim Your Water Rights report.
Wrong way round the U-bend?
EWP has signed IRC WASH and Water Integrity Network’s (WIN) statement questioning The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s decision to position technology as the primary solution to the global sanitation crisis. Having championed systemic approaches like city-wide inclusive sanitation and ‘non-sewered’ sanitation, the Foundation is shifting its funding to prioritise the marketing of reinvented toilets. WIN’s Barbara Schreiner and IRC’s Patrick Moriarty write: “this sends a disturbing message – that one of the biggest and most powerful funders of the sector sees governance and the tough, system, capacity strengthening, and institutional work as being of secondary importance. What does this mean for sanitation policy down the line?”