​World Water Day (WWD) is an annual United Nations Observance on March 22nd, started in 1993, focusing on the importance of water. It is coordinated by UN-Water and led by one or more UN-Water Members and Partners with a related mandate.​

 

​World Water Day celebrates water and raises awareness of the 2 billion people living without access to safe water. It is about taking action to tackle the global water crisis. A core focus of World Water Day is to support the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: water and sanitation for all by 2030.

 

The United Nations’ focus for 2022 is on groundwater.

 

​In Michigan...

 

World Water Day in Michigan has been a coalition effort, led by the People's Water Board Coalition since 2015, and focuses on legislator awareness, along with community education and advocacy on Michigan's water issues by residents and grassroots organizations. #MIWorldWaterDay

 

The first Michigan World Water Day event in 2015 in Lansing and included a community hearing with House representatives. Residents from Detroit, Highland Park, and Flint organized buses to discuss water shutoffs, affordability problems, and contaminated drinking water, and public health problems. Over the years, World Water Day in Michigan has become a bigger event covering more topics and including communities from across the state. 

 

In 2020, Covid-19 changed how we host MI World Water Day - since we could not be in person, we went virtual - and through those efforts MI World Water Week was born! Being able to include more community members that were not able to attend lobby days in Lansing and being able to diversify the types of activities we host has been a major success. If your community is WWD organizing events or if has calendar information to share, please contact MIWorldWaterDay@gmail.com.

 

If you have any questions or suggestions for future World Water Week events, please reach out to the team.