“Water for Life” Best Practices Award

The project was developed and rolled out under the auspices of the “Water for Life” Best Practices Award. The annual “Water for Life” Best Practices Award aims to acknowledge and promote efforts to meet international commitments made on water and related issues by 2015. The award recognises outstanding projects that are working to ensure sustainable long-term management of water resources and to help achieve the water and sanitation targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation. The theme of the awards for this year was “Water and Sustainable Development”.

The project’s main objective is to strengthen water and sanitation education in South Africa through implementation of the international Eco-School Programme’s 7 step framework for Education for Sustainable Development learning and change. These steps guide schools through a learning process which promotes water conservation and sanitation education, as well as engaging learners in enquiry-based learning methods which empower them to better understand their local water context and to take action to improve this. The project encourages citizen engagement and participatory learning and promotes stewardship in management of water especially in disadvantaged communities.

The “Water for life” Best Practices award is managed by the United Nations Office to Support the International Decade for Action “Water for Life” 2005-2015/UN-Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and the UN World Water Assessment Programme.

To read more on the project please click here.