Providing clean water and sanitation to people worldwide

“We live in a world with 7 billion people and 2.5 billion of them, by a conservative estimate, don’t have a toilet.”

Nick Valcourt is one of the organizers of the Colorado WASH Symposium, which invites professionals and experts in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene to the 2 day student organized event on the CU Boulder campus this weeks.

Valcourt says that in addition to being a dignity and equality issue, a lack of access to clean water and sanitation can suppress economic development and can lead to instability.

The Colorado WASH Symposium happens March 3rd and 4th on the CU Boulder campus. The focus of the 2015 symposium will be the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which the United Nations is poised to adopt in September of this year. These seventeen goals build on the Millennium Development Goals adopted in 2000 in a continued effort to strengthen global partnerships for a more sustainable future free from poverty. The CU WASH Symposium will address practical and political steps to achieving Goal 6 of the SDGs: to “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.”  This year’s key note speaker is  Clarissa Brocklehurst,  an independent water and sanitation consultant and former chief of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) WASH program.