Global Women's Water Initiative

The Global Women’s Water Initiative (GWWI) emerged to address the need to include women in water and sanitation decisions in their communities. It began as a collaborative venture among three international organizations, A Single Drop, Crabgrass and Women's Earth Alliance each bringing a unique set of expertise. Their combined experiences, partnerships, and insights enhanced each other’s ability to achieve broader impact. GWWI is currently a program of Women's Earth Alliance (WEA) in partnership with Crabgrass.

Since 2008, GWWI has coordinated trainings in East and West Africa supporting women from 9 nations all over the continent. We have trained 92 grassroots women, providing them with the tools and technologies to implement sustainable water and sanitation strategies in their target communities. Within WEA, GWWI became an issue-based Initiative through WEAs Africa program. GWWIs ultimate goal is to provide issue-focused support to WEAs other regional programs.

GWWI Founding Partners:

A Single Drop (ASD) brought experience in technology transfer and organizational development from their social entrepreneurial programs - A Single Drop for Safe Water, a professional WASH Consultancy in the Philippines and Women Water Stewards in Africa. ASD coordinated the appropriate technology, WASH Education, on-the-ground follow-up training, and project implementation components for the Global Women’s Water Initiative. ASDs Women Water Stewards program has now been absorbed by Women's Earth Alliance to integrate into the Global Women's Water Initiative, and Gemma Bulos, Founder and Executive Director of ASD has now stepped into the role of Director of GWWI.

Crabgrass is a human rights organization that has addressed water and other issues since 1985. Crabgrass’s participation in the GWWI is built upon their three International Women and Water Conferences held in South Asia: one in Varanasi, India; one in Kathmandu, Nepal; and one in Dehradun, India. Crabgrass coordinates the research, strategy, and finance components of the GWWI.

Women’s Earth Alliance (WEA) brings an international network of information-sharing and pro-bono support, as well as access to web-based technology and network facilitation. WEA coordinates the information technology aspects of network support, and helps with follow-up funding opportunities through microfinance or other means. WEA also coordinates the PR components of the GWWI.