What is it like to live in my country?

Is there enough water.

Activity 1: Water Scarcity

1) Define the terms physical and economic water scarcity.

2) Use the map below to find out if your country, or a region within your country, has enough water.

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Drinking Water

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“780 million people are still without improved sources of drinking water, and many more still lack safe drinking water.”

What do you think improved water sources means?

Activity 2: Does everyone in your country have access to fresh water?

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Thoiba collecting water for household use from the river about a kilometre’s walk from her home in the Upper West Region of Ghana on 27 May 2014. She has to collect water each morning before school, and says she is sometimes late as a result. Click on image to find out more.

1) Record the total percentage of people with access to improved fresh water in the, “What’s like life table,” below. The links can be found in the table.

More about life in template.docx

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Activity 2: What could we be doing instead?

1) Using the information below you are to make notes on the many ways that access to fresh water can improve the lives of a countries people. You should give special consideration to the effect it can have on the lives of young girls. Use real examples in your notes.

“Women can do nothing

Women can aspire to nothing

Women can achieve nothing

If they spend so much of their lives locating and carrying, what we might loosely call water.”

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Meet: TommyHer challenge: clean waterTommy’s school has no access to water, so she must bring a filled basin with her on her daily 1 kilometre walk to school. This task is only required of the female students, not the males.

“When water comes…everything changes.”

Health:

In developing countries, about 80% of illnesses are linked to poor water and sanitation conditions. 1 out of every 5 deaths under the age of 5 worldwide is due to a water-related disease. Clean and safe water is essential to healthy living.

Hunger

It may seem simple, but we forget that without access to a reliable source of water, food is hard to grow and even more difficult to preserve and prepare.

Poverty

Without water,you can’t grow food, you can’t build housing, you can’t stay healthy, you can’t stay in school and you can’t keep working.

Without clean water, the possibility of breaking out of the cycle of poverty is incredibly slim.

Education

The lack of safe water can cause even the best students to lose momentum as they deal with stomach pains and diarrhea from disease and hunger.

Students miss class to go fetch water, or to care for sick parents or siblings.

2) How has access to water affected the development of your country? Do some research to see how the availability of water has impacted on the development of your country. Use examples to illustrate how water has aided and/or hampered development in your country.