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Water: Where Empowerment Begins
Strength and dignity are her clothing … Give her a share in the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the city gates.
Every woman deserves no less than this. But in many countries around the world women receive far less.
In some places, a great barrier to women taking on more equal roles, getting educations or starting businesses is the sheer time they’re forced to spend collecting and carrying water.
Women in El Caguite, Nicaragua wake up as early as 2 a.m. to walk the arduous and often muddy distance to the closest public well—rising at that hour so they can wait in line and carry water back home in time for the food preparation and clothes washing that consumes the remainder of their day.
An Episcopal Relief & Development infrastructure project is bringing clean drinking water, sanitary latrines and relief from dangerous illnesses to the community. But to the village’s women, it means even more.
Constructing clean water systems can be the first step toward empowering women. These infrastructure improvements often mean a total transformation of women’s daily lives—clearing the way for the opportunities and equality they deserve. It’s a strategy Episcopal Relief & Development is pursuing around the world.
In the Anglican Diocese of Durgapur, India, for example, our partnership includes building easy to maintain wells and latrines. We support women’s cooperatives that provide much of the assistance and oversight for the projects. And we’ve also mobilized an all-female team of community health volunteers who are working with women and children in a 10-village area to promote hygiene.
As part of those efforts—and others around the world—Episcopal Relief & Development makes a concerted effort to seek out women, whose voices are often not heard in more traditional meetings with village elders.
Recently, a woman in a Durgapur village stood up to request that latrines be made part of our infrastructure work there. Currently, these women are forced to go into the fields or forests to relieve themselves, depriving them of the privacy and modesty that is so important in their culture. The village is also located in a migratory zone for elephants, exposing women who go out at night—including one who was killed by a passing elephant—to grave danger.
Because the women of Durgapur spoke up for their needs, the latrine is now part of the project—illustrating that even the process of building a water project can provide an important opportunity to empower women.
