Our Advocacy Focus
Our strategic objective of helping to bring to scale access to safe drinking water and safe sanitation requires many actors and many voices – no one organization can do it alone.
The Millennium Water Alliance is a consortium of implementing organizations that work directly in the world’s poorest regions, and it is a team player with others in the United States, striving to increase public support for US leadership in effective international development.
US Government
We directly lobby Congress to support cost-effective foreign assistance, and we work with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Department of State to make sure that water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) are fully recognized as critical components of all effective aid.
US Opinion Leaders and Other Organizations:
We look for opportunities for our members to engage with philanthropists, corporations, academia, media, and other non-government organizations to raise the awareness of WASH as one the most powerful tools we have to help improve the lives of millions and to promote values of self government, economic development, human health, environmental protection, and peace.
Civil Society in Developing Nations:
Full WASH coverage means:
- Regular access to safe drinking water
- Regular access to sanitation systems that are safe for humans and the environment
- Hygiene education that reduces illness and boosts school attendance and economic productivity.
This will only be attained when local communities and national governments are able to build and operate all WASH infrastructures for the long term. This better future requires our help now in encouraging a civil society movement that will stimulate government and private investment in sustainable water and sanitation at the local and national levels – a movement that comes largely from the ground up.
International NGOs such as MWA and its members can play a role in fostering this movement, but we know that the citizens of developing nations will decide what will be done. Millions in the developing world are working to improve conditions, and they are grateful for our help; in turn, we are committed to helping give voice to their concerns, and to respecting their strong efforts to make these goals a reality.
MWA’s advocacy program is committed to:
Sharing information with our coalition partners so that they and we make most effective use of our resources to escalate understanding of the need for US leadership in WASH. This also means sharing credit and recognizing that no one organization or group can do it alone – we need to work together.
