Celebrating Women in Uganda

Photos: Esther Havens

Do you take drinking water for granted?

There’s some interesting charitable work in Uganda organized by a non-profit called “Charity: Water” that I just learned about. I caught one of their PSA’s on the Internet the other day, and what interested me was the way it imagined a scenario in which Westerners had to obtain potable water like millions in developing nations: with a yellow water jug, carried across city blocks, traffic, miles–each and every day.

The PSA shows Western families and businesspeople dragging the ubiquitious yellow jugs that you see everywhere in Uganda and Rwanda through the streets of a city like New York. Equally shocking is the dirty water poured into a clean glass at the table of one of these privileged families.

1.1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water.

Charity: Water’s blog captures much of their daily work, now in Haiti, but one of my favorite posts celebrates the women in northern Uganda who are managing their own water well (over there, it’s called a “bore hole”). I love the way that these photos by the photographer Esther Havens captures the joy and power of these women.

Especially appropriate given it’s International Women’s Month.

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Learn more about how you can help communities like these here.

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Filed under: global justice, water, africa, charity: water, drinking water, potable water, rwanda, uganda