CWS Takes "Water for All" Campaign to Brazil Gathering
February 13, 2006
Carrying water in Ghana.
Photo: WaterAID/Caroline Penn |
The ninth assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) takes place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Feb. 13 - 26, 2006. The assembly is a gathering of some 3,000 people of faith from churches throughout the world.
Church World Service is playing a key role at the gathering through its partnership in advocacy campaigns aimed in part at placing water issues on the agenda of the churches and by supporting communities in their efforts to assure access to and control management of local water resources.
Lynda Selde of the Church World Service Education and Advocacy program is at the assembly and gives us this report:
PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil -- Participants are arriving at the Pontifical
University of Rio Grande do Sul, the venue for the WCC assembly. People
from all over the world are lining up at the registration tables and
are eagerly leafing through their packets to see what’s in store for
the week ahead.
Our awareness-raising water bottles are a hit. Each participant receives
a water bottle-it’s called a garaffa here-with their registration kit. The
bottle carries the water campaign stickers of Church World Service, the Ecumenical
Water Network, and Norwegian Church Aid, along with the assembly logo. For
the entire gathering, the only water distributed will be bottled water collected
from a local source right here Brazil. People will be able to refill their
garaffas with water from the big storage bottles placed throughout the venue.
The main program starts tomorrow, but the air already is filled with excitement and anticipation. People from almost every continent-many of them in beautiful native attire-are settling in and getting ready to participate in several days of worship, celebration, education, and advocacy.
We will begin tomorrow with briefings in the morning and the opening ceremony on Wednesday afternoon. From there we’ll move into strategy sessions around the upcoming water resolution (which I’ll talk about more in another dispatch) with our ecumenical partners. Then, it’s on to assembling the water materials in our big, impressive, green-topped water tent, which is where we’ll be doing water demonstrations and some other water activities. There will also be plenty of CWS posters and CWS water brochures and materials in the exhibition area just off the plenary hall, so that people can pick them up as they enter and leave the sessions.
It is going to be a busy and exciting few days for us as we conduct our workshops on global water issues, talk to delegates about the resolution, and share with people some stories about Church World Service’s successful water projects around the world.
The first CWS water workshop takes place on Wednesday in the water tent, and we’ll be reporting on that when it’s over. Our resources are here and we’re ready to share them with the hundreds of thousands of people who have come to Porto Alegre, in part, to learn about the right of all people to adequate, safe water and what they can do to help assure that access for the people of impoverished communities around the world.