Sen. Patrick Leahy receives Water Advocacy Award from Water Advocates President David Douglas. Photo: Water Advocates

March 3, 2008

In February, Water Advocates, a partner with Church World Service (CWS) working to ensure safe drinking water and sanitation for all people, presented its 2008 Water Advocate awards to nine members of Congress. Award recipients were Senators Patrick Leahy, Richard Durbin, Robert Bennett and Sam Brownback and Representatives David Obey, Nita Lowey, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Norman Dicks and John Culberson. Water Advocates chose the awardees for their successful efforts to significantly increase U.S. funding for safe drinking water and sanitation projects in the poorest regions of the world.

During 2007 these Senators and Representatives successfully exercised leadership among their colleagues in Congress to provide $300 million for 2008 to implement the Senator Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act. This Act, supported by CWS and signed into law in December 2005, made addressing the global need for safe drinking water and sanitation a priority of U.S. foreign policy and assistance.

More than 1 billion people around the world lack safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable drinking water, and approximately 2.5 billion do not have adequate sanitation facilities. Unsafe drinking water and inadequate sanitation cause 80 percent of the sicknesses in developing countries and kill between two and five million people each year, mainly young children.

Water Advocates (www.wateradvocates.org) is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing U.S. support for worldwide access to safe, affordable, and sustainable drinking water and adequate sanitation. It serves as an important advisor to the Washington, D.C.-based ecumenical Religious Working Group on Water, which includes several CWS-member denominations and is chaired by Martin Shupack, associate director of the CWS Education & Advocacy Program.

In its Water for All Campaign, CWS works through local and global partnerships to enable access to, and provision of, potable water in countries where it is most needed. It supports community-based water projects and building local community capacity to inform national water and sanitation policies. And CWS works to provide a collective ecumenical voice in the global public debate on water and sanitation issues.