Globe trotting to get water running
23/01/2006
A water worker is to travel thousands of miles across the globe to experience the daily struggle of surviving without the world’s most precious resource.
Essex & Suffolk Water employee, Jenny Abel, is a member of an expedition to Burkina Faso, in Africa, for the water company’s adopted international charity, WaterAid.
WaterAid is dedicated to saving lives by providing safe, clean domestic water, sanitation and hygiene education in parts of Africa and Asia. A child dies every 15 seconds in these parts of the world because of the lack of these everyday essentials.
It costs only £15.00, the price of a music cd, to provide someone with a lasting supply of clean, safe water, sanitation and hygiene education. Essex & Suffolk Water will be sending out WaterAid appeal leaflets with customers’ water bills at the beginning of March. It is hoped that customers will respond generously for this worthwhile, life-saving cause.
Twenty-four-year-old Jenny, who was born in Chelmsford and now lives in Braintree, Essex, will leave her home comforts for the West African country on Monday, February 6 and spend ten days (until Saturday, February 18) living in one of the ten poorest countries in the world.
Jenny, who has worked in Essex & Suffolk Water’s demand planning department for two years, will spend time in deprived rural villages in the Koudougou region, experiencing first-hand how more than five million people, of the 12 million population in Burkina Faso, survive without water and how a staggering ten and a half million people survive without sanitation.
The charity group will also witness the huge difference water, sanitation and hygiene education can make to peoples’ lives when they visit villages where WaterAid’s work is in progress or has been completed. They will also have the opportunity to talk to local leaders about the problems and solutions.
An excited, but apprehensive, Jenny said: “On average Essex & Suffolk Water customers each use 150 litres of water every day. It is going to be a very humbling experience to see these people struggle to survive because they don’t have access to things that we take for granted.
“Some of them have to walk miles and miles to get a bucket of polluted water, from a river or muddy borehole, which they know will make their family ill.
“I am nervous about what I am going to see but also excited and proud to be representing WaterAid which not only hugely improves the quality of peoples’ lives but also saves lives. When I return from the trip I will use my knowledge and experience to raise awareness of these issues and their solutions as much as I can.”
For further information on WaterAid and the work the charity is doing in Burkina Faso other other parts of Africa and Asia click onto: http://www.wateraid.org/international/what_we_do/where_we_work/burkina_faso/default.asp
To arrange interviews with Jenny before departure and on return and for further information please contact Cara Hall on 0191 301 6720.