Water! The basic necessity of life. Something not one of us can
survive without. This is one resource which we all have taken for
granted for centuries now. Come on have a look at the map of the world
it doesn’t seem like there is any scarcity of it right? But then stop
and think, none of us can survive on that saline resource. The fresh
water that we humans need to survive is the water that is become
scarce day by day.

This is a global crisis which is building on the low. The reason we
don’t realize that we are falling short of it, is because we have
enough running water throughout the day in our taps and then of course
we have the “best tasting” water that is bottled up by huge corporate
companies and sold to us at high costs. We as humans don’t realize the
value of something until we lose it, but till the time we realize the
value of this life force we might not exist.

It is time to come together and make the human race realize that we
need to conserve water for our existence and not privatize it to make
profits. This is not a commodity to make money with, because all that
money will be of no use if we are dead. 

This summit is a step towards building a movement that will create
realization and stop the waste of the most important resource on the
face of this earth. So lets start working.

-Sanya Makhani, DROP Summit Delegate  

 Photos

Why did the New York City DROP Summit rock? Probably because of all those steallar projects (we'll write some blogs about this later), amazing participants (seriously, the ideas were flowing), and totally engaged partners (the workshops were very exciting and very informative)

Big thanks to the Mayor Bloomberg's office for donating the water bottles.

Parsons The New School for Design, Communications, Design and Technology Department helped welcome the students as well as helping to co-sponsor the entire event. They also had two student projects on display- One was a projection piece displaying the liters of water it takes to produce and apple, and a hamburger. Check it Out. Pretty crazy huh? This is changing my mind on becoming a vegetarian, or eating way less meat. (7 liters to produce an apple, 4,700 liters of water to produce a hamburger)

One of the other Parsons projects that I thought was interesting was the "water is" piece which was a projection of water bubbles. You got a number to text on your phone and one of the bubbles would essentially POP and tell you an interesting fact on water.

We encouraged all the participants to check out these projects throughout the day and I really thought it added that extra pizazz that we were looking for.

More to come on all the sweet projects....

Thank you delegates, partners, Parsons, and everyone else who was involved in making the DROP Summit a huge success!

A special thanks to DROP delegates for applying to be part of the DROP Summit and coming to the event with an open mind and ready to learn more about the impending water crisis. We had a very productive day. We got to know fellow activists, learn more about the water crisis through the movie "FLOW" and decided which projects to become part of. In the afternoon we devised action plans to make our projects even more successful and attended workshops to expand skills we already have. So far, we have 7 great water projects taking place all across this beautiful blue globe of ours! People just like you are rolling up their sleeves and working hard to make a difference by raising awareness of water availability, access, conservation, and privatization.

Now, we are beginning a new phase of the DROP program. Over the last weekend we got excited about DROP and received the necessary tools to develop projects and start changing people's skewed perception that water will always flow from the tap. In the next phase of the program, we will take what we learned and apply it to make a tangible impact. Keep your eyes pealed for updates on each project from the DROP Summit. Also, we are doing major updates on the DROP website to show you just how amazing the DROP Summit was and what you can do to become part of the next big movement!

Over 70 percent of the United States will experience water shortages in the near future and this means that states will compete for the remaining availability of H2O. States will sue one another and pandemonium will ensue! Montana and Wyoming are already battling for water rights. Montana has sued Wyoming for taking too much water from the Tongue and Powder rivers which spring in Wyoming and flow into Montana (http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/10/21/news/state/25-waterrights.txt) California is already experiencing drought, the northwest is suffering shortages due to light showfall in the past few years... all this makes me think the water shortage is coming to town sooner than expected. Global warming plus diminishing resources will zap water availability from both ends and we will all feel the consequences.

With this scare in mind, I find some comfort in organizations like Food and Water Watch, who are trying to raise awareness of the impending global water crisis. Most people don't even have access to clean drinking water and those who do, waste it! It is about time for a movement to address the reality of our water supply.

I am glad YouthNoise is taking initiative to mobilize young people around issues of water. The DROP Summit on November 15th in NYC will definitely be a stepping stone to raising awareness and building a coalition of youth to stop this global crisis.