World Water Day 2007

World Water Day is an international day of observance and action to draw attention to the plight of the more than 1 billion people world wide that lack access to clean, safe drinking water. Celebrated since 1993, World Water Day was designated in 1992 when the United Nations (UN) General Assembly passed a resolution. With each passing year, the observance has grown larger and stronger.

In many ways though, World Water Day is still a relatively unknown event. Even with the support of the UN and efforts by leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and committed individuals, World Water Day is today at a similar stage as Earth Day was in the early 1970’s – important but relatively unknown.

Beginning in 2005 this began to change. Ethos Water and leading NGOs began an effort to bring even greater attention to the world water crisis on World Water Day. Then in 2006 with the strong backing of the Starbucks Coffee Company and other leading corporate and non-profit allies, we began a major effort to establish March 22 as a day where everyone, regardless of their involvement in water issues, pauses to reflect on the impact of the world water crisis and takes small but meaningful ACTION to make a difference.

It gets really tiring hearing people criticize Starbucks, particularly when as an employee I have so much I like about the company and what it does for its employees, and what it does to take serious corporate social responsibility.
(Maybe more on this later...)

In the mean time, I wanted to spread that this Thursday March 22 is Washington D.C.'s World Water Day Walk--a Starbucks supported event.