Arif Ali | AFP | Getty Images
A Pakistani girl fills a pot with water from a hand pump on the outskirts of Lahore on March 21, 2017, ahead of World Water Day.
The reason clean water is such so important is due to the far-reaching impact it has on other aspects of development. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reflect that improvements in water quality and wastewater management will have run-on effects on health and city sustainability.
For Hreljac, part of the solution to fixing the problem is to approach the issue at the local level.
“We’ve avoided working on big-scale, national government projects,” Hreljac said, “The best results we’ve had is working directly with villages or municipalities and local governments that are a lot more accountable for the local situations.”
“If there’s no ownership or people taking care of the projects at the base level, wells break (and) things go wrong. Water is not free in the sense where you can just put in a well and it will last forever. It takes the community buying into it,” he added.
As for those unsure about how to contribute, Hreljac suggested starting small.
“I think the important thing when I was a kid was that I recognized that I could try to do something small and get engaged. And even though I didn’t have all the answers and didn’t come from a position of affluence or knowledge, … I had the optimism to do something small and that ended up making a big difference,” Hreljac said
