We are joining together on or around Wednesday March 22 - World Water Day – to raise public awareness on this issue. We’ll be holding public forums, Walk for Water, film showings and other events across the country to raise awareness and help people take action.

We are joining together on or around Wednesday, March 22, World Water Day, to raise public awareness on this issue. We’ll be holding public forums, “water walks,” film showings and other events across the country to raise awareness and help people take action. It has been observed every March 22nd since 1993.

On March 22, let's stand in solidarity with our Southern partners at the Forum, pressing for community control of water services - not privatization that benefits multinational corporations. Join us – contact the people indicated to get more details of local events.

A SODUKU puzzle where you can learn lots about water issues and have even more fun doing it!

Walk for Water!
Community Action for World Water Day: March 22, 2006
How-To Kit

World Water Day has been observed every year since 1993 on March 22. The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (the Earth Summit) designated this day as a time when nations might bring attention to and implement the recommendations of the United Nations’ Agenda 21 that deal with the protection of and access to fresh water.

World Water Day is a time for nations to bring attention to and implement United Nations recommendations dealing with the protection of and access to fresh water. This year, it’s also the last day of the World Water Forum, a gathering of international financial institutions, multinational corporations and different governments which believe that privatizing water systems is still the best solution to the world’s water dilemma.

At the previous World Water Forum in Kyoto in 2003, activists from around the world demanded universal access to drinking water and lobbied against the privatization of water systems. The 2006 Forum, whose theme is “Local Actions for a Global Challenge,” promises to be even more hotly contested.

Stating that “Water is needed in all aspects of life,” the signatories to Agenda 21 assert that their “general objective is to make certain that adequate supplies of water of good quality are maintained for the entire population of this planet, while preserving the hydrological, biological and chemical functions of ecosystems.”

The World Water Forum is one of the places where governments and water companies come together to address issues of water access. The 4th World Water Forum takes place in Mexico City this year from March 16 to 22. “Controlling” is perhaps the word that best captures the ambitious objective that underlies the World Water Forum – an objective that is contested by many of the world’s social movements.

The Forum receives funding from the Canadian government and is organized by the World Water Council, which is composed of major international financial institutions such as the World Band, a number of multinational corporations and different governments. Forum sponsors believe that privatizing water systems is still the best solution to the world’s water dilemma.

We hope you’ll focus your efforts on the messages that local communities should make the decisions about their water services and water is not a commodity but a public trust and shared legacy that must be protected and made available to all.

One of the actions in our current campaign is to get municipalities to sign onto our 2003 Water Declaration which asserts these principles. You can make this a focal point of your Walk for Water on March 22. If your community has already signed on, ask them to declare March 22 World Water Day in your community.

Here’s a checklist to help you start planning:

• Find out if your Town, City, Municipal or Regional Council has already signed the Water Declaration. More than 100 have; a full list is available on D&P’s website at www.devp.org.



• If it has, plan to make your event a celebration. If it has not, why not try and convince it that it should? You can download a full kit of materials to help you do this, including a draft declaration and draft presentation to council, at www.kairoscanada.org. Have these materials ready for your first planning meeting!



• Get together with people in your community who are interested in this issue and invite them to your first planning meeting. Begin with Development and Peace – groups, Just Youth! groups for example. Invite others such as: KAIROS groups and members; local Council of Canadians chapters; schools, colleges, universities, unions – especially CUPE and other public sector unions.Let us know what you are planning so that we can include it in our national publicity for the day. Remember: we hope to have as many events happening at the same time as possible!
  

  Let us know what's happening out there...

• Please let us know what is happening in your region as soon as you can. Then we will let KAIROS, Council of Canadians, and CUPE know about your activities, and include everyone’s events in our media work to be as much help to you as possible!

• Contact Siobhan Rowan at Development and Peace
  by phone or1-800-494-1401x229 or 416-922-1592 x229,
  or by e-mail at srowan@devp.org.

Tasks may include:

CONNECTING WITH YOUR COUNCIL: let sympathetic members of your council know you’re coming so they can meet you. If your council has already signed the declaration, work with them to get March 22nd declared World Water Day in your community.

LOGISTICS: someone needs to plan the route and ensure that you have the necessary permission to walk the route and gather at your final destination.

PLAN FOR THE DAY: Who will speak? What will they say? Make sure you have an agenda that all public participants understand and are happy with. One option for part of the day is the water ritual on page 4-8 of this doc that was used at the launch of the Development and Peace/KAIROS campaign in October 2005.

LOCAL PUBLICITY: designate one or two people to produce and coordinate publicity (e.g.) posters and announcements for churches and community gathering places, community papers, radio and cable shows, and bulletin boards.

MEDIA OUTREACH: we will do national media outreach but it’s also important for you to make connections with the media in your area so that they will cover the event. Contact Siobhan for a sample media release.

MATERIALS: a small group should that ensure that you have plenty of materials on hand on the day of the event: handbills (copy attached) to inform the people you meet along your route, action cards for them to sign, banners, signs, and symbolic jugs of water to carry.

MUSIC / ENTERTAINMENT: if you’re planning to have the Raging Grannies or other musical accompaniment in your march, make sure someone is responsible for making those arrangements and providing any assistance needed.

REFRESHMENTS: you may want a social time at the end of your event. Make sure someone plans for this and has fair trade coffee, tea, and chocolate on hand!

Ideas for promoting your event

• Pass the word at your event with the handbill. You can adapt it as necessary, and add info for your local Development and Peace contact. Photocopy, cut, and hand out along the way.


• After your event, send us pictures, clippings, and your own recollections of the day.

PREPARED BY Development and Peace AND KAIROS FOR THE LAUNCH OF THE ECUMENICAL WATER CAMPAIGN OCTOBER 2005

For this ritual, you will need:

Five (5) speakers
Four (4) large jugs of water
One large central vessel to hold water
Colorful scarves for speakers to wear and cloths to decorate the space

How to do it:

• Prepare your speakers:
  • Make sure everyone has a copy of their text and has practiced it.
  
  
• Prepare your space:
  • Identify the four directions. Make a central space where the four directions meet.
  • Place a jug filled with water at the end point of each of the directions.
  • Place the large central vessel in the center of the space – ideally, elevated so that everyone can see.
  • Set up a sound system if necessary and available.
  • Decorate with fabric.
  
  
• Prepare for action:
  • Speaker #1 should be in the center of the space.
  • Speakers #1-4 will each stand in one of the directions with a jug of water – as their turns come, each will move forward to the center and speak their piece, then pour the water into the central vessel.

SCRIPT:

SPEAKER #1: Today is World Water Day. We are gathered here today to join with people of faith and conviction across Canada and around the world to call for the protection of water as a sacred gift, and to ensure that all people have access to water. We believe in the fundamental right of all people to safe, clean water.

Today, in Mexico City, the fourth World Water Forum is coming to an end. The Forum receives funding from the Canadian government and brings together major international financial institutions, a number of multinational corporations and different governments. Forum sponsors believe that privatizing water systems is still the best solution to the world’s water dilemma.

As members of Canada’s ecumenical community [you can add other types of organizations here: students, unions, community groups, etc.], we believe that water is a sacred gift, not a commodity, and we are part of a campaign to ensure that it is publicly or cooperatively controlled.

Listen to these stories from Canada and the Global South, stories that tell us about the water crisis facing our world today.

Speaker # 2 carries forward the jug of water from the South.

SPEAKER #2: We come from the south and represent the city of Cochabamba, the third largest city in Bolivia. In 1999 our city’s water system was contracted to an American-owned company called Bechtel. This privatization of our water system was done because we needed money. Before they would give us a loan, the World Bank demanded that our water system be privatized. Within a year, our water rates had risen so much that thousands of families were paying 20% of their income just on water.

We protested by organizing a general strike. The army responded violently, with guns and tear gas. A sharpshooter killed one of the protesters, a teenaged student named Victor Hugo Daza.

After that, public resistance to water privatization became so united and so strong that the government was forced to cancel the contract with Bechtel.

Today in Cochabamba we still struggle to provide affordable water to all our people, but we are committed to doing this with a publicly owned water system.

Speaker # 2 pours the water into the central vessel.

Speaker # 3 carries forward the jug of water from the East.

SPEAKER #3: We come from the east and represent the village of Bhonta Kalyata in Rajastan, India. Every year we suffer through periods of terrible drought that affects our crops and our cows and dries up our wells. And yet during the rainy season every year torrential rain falls on our province.

We knew that if all the rain that falls could be captured these problems could be solved.

With the help of a non-governmental organization we have been able to reforest 12 square kilometers of barren land around our village. The new forests have slowed down erosion and have ensured that the heavy rain will seep into the ground. Today our fields are greener, our cows produce more milk and our people are not thirsty during the dry season.

When people organize and develop solutions like this to their problems, a community can spring back to life.

Speaker # 3 pours the water into the central vessel.

Speaker # 4 carries forward the jug of water from the West.

SPEAKER #4: We represent the Africa Women’s Economic Policy Network. We have studied how the privatization of water affects women in Uganda. Women spend an oppressive number of hours accessing water sources and hauling water home. Domestic violence is rising because women are away from the home for so long collecting water. Children miss school because they have to help their mothers collect water. Women collect water from contaminated sources due to the higher price of clean water. Of course this has many adverse health effects on the women and their families.

This is just in Uganda – but we know that water privatization will have a similar impact on women across the continent.

We want to strengthen people’s ability to get access to safe water. We look for alternatives to privatization and try to ensure that women’s voices are heard first and foremost in this struggle.

Speaker # 4 pours the water into the central vessel.

Speaker # 5 carries forward the jug of water from the North.

SPEAKER #5: We come from the north and represent the Dene of Akaitcho (ah-KITE-cho). We have never surrendered our title or rights to our traditional territory in Canada’s Northwest. Five years ago our territorial government signed a treaty with Canada that recognized Akaitcho rights to lands and resources in our traditional areas.

But now we are in a struggle to protect the sacred waters of our territory. Canada wants to transfer rights and responsibilities over our land and waterways to the government of the Northwest Territories. This transfer of rights would include rights over “any beds or bodies of water” and “any inland waters on or below the surface.”

This violates a treaty of friendship we signed with Canada more than a hundred years ago. We call on Canada to honour our friendship treaty so that we can live in coexistence with Canada. Our model of coexistence will allow the Akaitcho to keep responsibility for our waters even as we welcome newcomers to live alongside us. With these rights we can continue to care for our lands, water and wildlife, for the benefit of everyone who lives on our territory.

Speaker # 5 pours the water into the central vessel.

Speaker #1: The issue of water security touches all creation and all of humanity. Water is not a commodity to be sold off to the highest bidder – it is a common good that the whole community should have access to.

At this point, write your own concluding remarks which make a link to your municipality or region, and either congratulate your council for adopting the Water Declaration or encourage them to do so.

Cities who signed Water Declaration