Water is something we rarely think about; we get up in the morning and turn on our taps to brush our teeth, hop in a nice hot shower and pour ourselves a glass of ice water on a hot summers day, all without a thought about how clean it is or where it came from. While the idea of water rarely plays on our minds, no one can live with out it, and across the globe some 2.6 billion men, women and children across the globe lack access to access to clean water.
This week, August 17-23, 2008, World Water Week is well under way. Held in Stockholm leaders from around the world unite to strategize on ways in which the global community can work together on capacity-building, partnership-building and follow-up on the implementation of international processes and programs in water and development. This year's theme is; “Progress and Prospects on Water: For a Clean and Healthy World”
The global summit has once again been met with please to resolve the growing challenges of sanitation, climate change and providing drinkable water supplies to communities across the globe. At the top of the agenda for this years summit is sanitation, as summit organizers say lack of adequate sanitation is a scandal that costs the lives of 1.4 million children every year.
While having access to clean water is a major concern, for many just accessing any water at all is a strenuous burden. Imagine walking for miles once or twice a day, to collect water, then having to carry a 5 gallon bucked on your head the long journey home. The task of water collection is not only time consuming, but strenuous as those who bare the heavy loads are most often women and children, often causing injury or permanent 
damage. Now imagine being able to collect five times more water and then being able to almost effortlessly push it home, it would be life changing! And that is why I love the hippo water roller, which organizations like Project H Design are working to improve and distribute. What about when the water collected is unclean and filtered, or you are out all day trekking and you have no access to clean water? Well innovative products like the Life Straw, can really be life savers.
Products like the Hippo Roller and Life Straw, are both inventive and practical, and while they are cost efficient, distribution of such devices and the many other products and programs are greatly needed to see that the access to clean and potable water is something that will no longer be a struggle for any man, woman or child. However, while the global community has made significant strides there is a long way to go in seeing that everyone has access to sustainable water solutions, and global investments need substantial increases if we are to see an improvement to not only access to water supplies, but awareness, prevention and the eradication of many water borne diseases, there are many inventive solutions taking foot.
