Conquering the Global Water Crisis one loan at a time
More than half a billion people could solve their own drinking water and sanitation needs if they just had access to small loans.
This month, Water.org reached a critical milestone, attracting and mobilizing $1 billion in capital to support small, easy-to-repay loans for people in need of access to water and sanitation. Water.org now is in 13 countries, cultivating new partnerships and graduating partners who continue to lend on their own.
This $1 billion of mobilized capital demonstrates that finance is a viable tool to help meet the funding gaps to achieve the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6) which calls for clean water and sanitation for all people. The funding gap for extending safely managed access—fully meeting SDG6—is $89.6 billion a year. That dollar amount can seem overwhelming. But at Water.org we don’t believe that SDG6 is only aspirational, it’s also attainable in our lifetime.
We know that for every $1 invested by donors, Water.org leverages 40 times that amount from capital markets to fund vital water and sanitation services. Bottom-up financing is an in-demand solution for millions of people.
Take for example Lackshmee, a woman in India who used a small loan through WaterCredit to finance access to drinking water in her home, freeing her from the burden of spending large amounts of time, energy and money to obtain clean water for her family. Instead of using hours each day searching for water, Lackshmee now uses that time to sew. That work earns Lackshmee money to send her kids to school and to repay her loan. And the money from the repaid loan is recycled to help another family gain access to water and sanitation.
Lack of safe drinking water within a 30-minute round trip from their home traps hundreds of millions of people—nearly one out of every nine people on the planet—in poverty. Unsafe water increases the risk of disease. And the burden of retrieving clean water falls disproportionately on women and girls. Easy access to safe water keeps girls in school and empowers women to earn income to invest in their future.
So what can a $1 billion buy? It can buy an acceleration to the end of the global water crisis, strengthen our global economy and help bring millions of people the good health, power, and dignity that come with access to a tap and a toilet.
[Excerpts of article by Gary White, CEO and co-founder of Water.org]
This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid, International Cooperation by Grant Montgomery.