Post Tagged with: "millennium development goals"

Water in a Dry Land

Throughout the world people migrate to large cities in search of better services like education and water. In Jordan, however, when your city is located in the desert, getting enough water for your daily needs can still be a constant challenge. It’s a bit ironic that Jordan, named after the river that makes its western border with Israel, is one of the driest countries on the planet. Living conditions are especially hard in Jordan’s second-largest city of Zarqa, just north-west of Amman. Here residents experience all the hassles and discomforts of a limited and antiquated water system. Not all houses have running water; if you are lucky enough to have it, you probably have it for only a day or two in a given week. In the above video, residents talk about their struggles and hopes for Zarqa’s water system. Precious drinking water is wasted because many municipal pipes, seemingly[…]

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(desperate for) Water Aid

It’s been ten years since world leaders came together to form what became the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to tackle world poverty. Heads of state recently met again for a summit at UN headquarters in New York to discuss progress made in the last decade. My most recent assignment with Water Aid UK was not to document progress that the NGO has made in communities where it works. Instead I was commissioned to visit areas where there is still much work left to be done. Unfortunately, it’s not too hard to find schools, hospitals and communities that lack clean water sources or proper toilets and sanitation facilities here in NE Uganda, which is the poorest and least developed area of the country. Water Aid has used these stories for awareness campaigns that led up to the summit. They’ve also shared them with the decision makers themselves. They hope to[…]

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