Nothing beats a glass of cold water on a muggy summer day. 


via GIPHY

But billions of people around the world can’t just open a fridge or go to a water cooler and quench their thirst.

Their relationship to water is more precarious. For them, water sources may be inaccessible or routinely contaminated.

This day-to-day struggle has tremendous educational consequences.

Here are 4 reasons why water insecurity is a major foe of education:

1) Dehydration

Every function of a person’s body depends on water.

When a person doesn’t drink enough water she can experience fatigue, general weakness, headaches, dizziness, rapid heartbeat, sunken eyes, low urination and more.

For a student, this hinders learning by disrupting focus, effective communication, retention of information and more. In other words, you just feel miserable overall.

2) Sickness

Water insecurity also involves contamination that can lead to disease, diarrhea, pain and hunger.

Water can become contaminated by unsafe sanitation practices, industrial pollutants or bacteria.  

If a teacher gets sick, then that means class is cancelled.

And a student who contracts an illness can be sick for an indefinite amount of time.

6 to 8 million people die each year from contaminated water or related disasters. Although polio is nearly eradicated, it still exists in Pakistan and Afghanistan and is spread through contaminated water.

3) Stress

If a student doesn’t have enough water every day, she will inevitably get stressed out, wondering when water will become available again. Similarly, a shoddy sanitation system will cause stress, especially as a girl begins to experience her puberty.

Chronic and even temporary stress affects the brain’s ability to form and retain memories and cross-brain connections.

4) Impact on Girls 

Girls are disproportionately affected by water insecurity for a bunch of reasons.  

They’re more likely to be told to fetch water during the day, because boys are given priority to learn, which leaves little time for going to school.

Fetching water is not going to a hose attached to the house and filling a bucket up. Far from it. Every day, girls and women may be required to collect up to 40 pounds of water from a source 4 miles away. That’s hours of arduous work.

If schools do not have toilets, girls are more likely than boys to drop out especially as adolescence arrives. The stigma associated with female puberty compels girls to stay home when they start having their period.  

Also, if no adequate sanitation exists then girls will be vulnerable to sexual assault, which can lead to abandoning school out of fear or being pulled from class for honor or safety reasons.


Access to clean tap water, adequate sanitation and simple purification tools have a drastic impact on school attendance and performance, especially for girls.

62 million girls do not pursue a secondary education each year, and lack of water and sanitation is a primary reason for this.

Global citizens have to demand stronger efforts from world leaders to provide students with the fundamental rights of safe water and sanitation.

You can TAKE ACTION NOW by emailing Swedish leaders to elevate their support of global water and sanitation.  

Editorial

Defeat Poverty

Water’s essential role in keeping kids in school

By Joe McCarthy