Water Communications and Knowledge Management (Water CKM)
More than 660 million people meet each new day without safe drinking water. One in three people still lack access to a toilet, and every day more than 350,000 children are born into a world that produces less food than it did the day before. Water is a vital resource not just for humans, but also for a variety of aquatic ecosystems, including wetlands, watersheds, rivers, estuaries and coastal areas. By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population could be living in water-stressed conditions. With agriculture accounting for around 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals in the world today, the impact on the global food supply will be substantial. These are the critical issues — and lives at stake — as the USAID Center for Water Security, Sanitation, and Hygiene and its Agency counterparts work to support the Sustainable Development Goals and the U.S. Government Global Water Strategy.
Activity Description
The CKM project will support USAID’s Water Office and its partners, to increase water sector program knowledge sharing and data collection, both internally and externally. This project will support USAID research and analysis to improve program outcomes and learning, and enhance communication and outreach to increase awareness of USAID water program activities and results to a wide range of stakeholders and partners.
This includes the production of various communication products such as the Global Waters magazine, a bi-weekly Water Currents sector news, the Global Waters Radio podcast series, quarterly case studies and Water Update, and Safeguarding the World’s Water annual report. In addition it will support social media and multimedia approaches as well as E3 events and conferences.
The project also has a knowledge management component that developed and supports the Globalwaters.org knowledge-sharing website; conducts a post-project evaluation series of USAID-funded water and sanitation projects; collects, analyzes, and visualizes data; performs research and analysis; and supports learning, sharing, and collaboration.
Related: Applying a Sustainability Lens to Past Projects to Inform the Future (FY 2017 Project Profile)
Actual Outcomes
- 33 communications products published on Global Waters between March 2016 and Jan. 2017 (average 3 per month)
- 5 issues of Global Waters published between March 2016 and Jan. 2017
- Total website views March 2016 – Dec. 2016: 17,588 (1,758 per month)
- 12 original podcasts since series’ March 2016 launch in advance of World Water Day
- 5,080 total listens between March 2016 and Jan. 2017
- 22 newsletters released in 2016, beginning in Feb. 2016 (average 2 per month)
- Total # of page views for Sanitation Updates in 2016: 169,925 (14,160 per month on average)
