It is so incredibly hot in Ahmedabad city (Gujarat state, India)! When temperatures hover between 42 and 45 degrees celsius, the brain simply does not function much. The primary thought when the head, the heart and indeed the soul meet, is the need for water. Water is literally the source of life at the moment – all you want is to keep drinking water. Food is secondary. Not drinking water for even an hour has immediate implications on health – headaches, dryness setting in mouth, lethargy from dehydration and in general an inability to move hands and legs to do something productive.

That is me. I need water all the time and I have it. I do not step out of the house (I almost always step out only in the evenings )  for even 10 minutes without a bottle of water.

And then there are the people I see the rare times I step out during the day. Working on construction sites in the hot sun, sweeping streets, pulling carts, generally doing all kinds of manual labour with family in tow. Yes, they bring their children along because where else would they leave them? In their homes which are on the footpaths (sidewalks)?

Young boys carrying sodas up almost 500 steps to a temple visited by tourists in Mount Abu, Rajasthan. It was the middle of the day when this picture was taken.

I will not forget the little boy of not more than nine who asked me for my bottle of water as I was walking down the street at 11 pm after a fun night out. Mind you he began by asking me for money and when I said I wouldn’t he asked for my bottle of water. I, with a tiny bit of reluctance, gave away my precious almost full bottle of water. How do you refuse someone who asks for water? I knew he was probably thirsty and needed water but my head convinced me that he wanted to sell the plastic scrap and make money. Well, okay! It was still better than giving money. When I turned a second later, he was gulping down the water and I watched as he downed the entire bottle (a large bottled mineral water) in one shot.

Tears in my eyes, I walked back to take him and buy him some food and more water but he disappeared quickly into the crowd. The contrast between my life  and those like me and him and those like him is stark but when it comes to water – access to water – the chasm is so deep and wide that all you can do is stand at the edge – with binoculars if need be – to know what is happening at the other end. Just seeing and knowing will in itself will be the beginning of the heart and mind seeking ways to not just have “them” cross the chasm and reach us but to bridge the chasm so we can meet halfway. For water, an increasingly scarce commodity, is something we must share – those of us that have access to it and control it with those who don’t.

Through this Fellowship, our fellows in Burma, West Bank, Ethiopia and Mexico will bring us those heart breaking stories of people struggling to meet their water needs. Bring those binoculars out so you can see at close quarters all that we are trying to show you.

By Pushpa Iyer

I am excited to launch the 2014 Peacebuilders Fellowship program; a program which will present water stories from four countries – Burma, Ethiopia, Mexico and West Bank.

Children doing dishes in a street in Freetown, Sierra Leone

I have great hopes from our first batch of passionate and committed Peacebuilder Fellows.  They come from varied backgrounds and with wide ranging experiences in various parts of the world. You can read their bios here.

The goal of this Fellowship, “Giving a voice to the voiceless and a face to the faceless”, comes from my own personal commitment to bringing change and building peace – change and peace as defined by those who are in midst of conflict.

The Center’s slogan – Knowledge as Action; Action as Change – defines my personal, academic and professional approach to bringing change and building peace: As we become more informed, action becomes inevitable.

This is what I hope as outcome of  this project – hearing the stories of individuals experiencing water conflicts will make us act!

The stories we gather from the field will be told on our website in August 2014. Here, on this site, we present the stories of the storytellers, that is, of our Peacebuilder Fellows. Reflections of the storytellers should make some compelling reading. Please do follow our Fellows on their journey and do cheer them regularly through your comments. Thank you.