At C4W, our story begins with the vision and commitment of four founding board members who believed that collective action could transform the future of water security. Each brings unique experience, perspective and passion to the mission of making communities more water-secure, whether through insights from global institutions, local leadership or sector-spanning innovation. In this interview series, we sit down with our founders to hear their reflections on what inspired their journey, how they see C4W’s role in shaping a more secure water future, and why collective action is the key to lasting change.
Letitia A. Obeng is a professional in the water sector with decades of experience, including senior roles at the World Bank. She currently serves as Board Chair of C4W, where she continues to champion collective action and ensure that the voices of communities most affected by the water crisis remain at the center of solutions.
What inspired you to work in the water sector and fight for water security?
Letitia: I’ve always had a connection to water, primarily because my mother was working on water issues when I was growing up. I loved joining her field trips to sample snails that are a vector for a tropical water-related disease called schistosomiasis, for her research. Then, as I got older, she was a director of a research institute studying the fauna and flora and monitoring what was, at the time, the largest man-made lake in the world, the Volta lake in Ghana. And then, when she moved on to work on the environment more broadly, I saw the important role that water plays in the environment. After that introduction, like most girls, I wanted to be like my mom. So you see, my exposure to it growing up helped me realize how important and valuable water is to human beings, and our lives.
How has your perspective on water security changed over time?
Letitia: Water security is something that I came to better understand and appreciate over time. People are water secure when they can reap the benefits that water provides for their lives, while at the same time there is an acceptable risk from the damage that water can bring. My initial focus was on trying to make things better for people. Water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) were a priority, and in particular sanitation which I felt was a more challenging subject, with implications for people and their health, and so closely linked to water. I would say that my early mission was to help improve the quality of people’s lives by providing them better access to water, sanitation, health education and hygiene education. Over time, I realized that it’s not just about WASH. In my work at the World Bank, I ended up having oversight responsibility for teams working on urban water supply and sanitation, rural water supply and sanitation, and water resources management. When you look at it that way, you see that everything is interconnected, and it’s all about this very finite resource that the people of the world have to share. It became easier for me to understand that, unless we all work together to help people make the best of this finite resource, we’re all going to be in trouble.
Why do you believe that collective action is vital for solving the water security crisis?
Letitia: You cannot have sustainable long-term progress in health, education, access to WASH, agriculture, industry, etc., if there isn’t water security and if people aren’t water secure. The success of each and every one of these development sectors in achieving their goals depends on people being water secure. For example, think of the schools which have no toilets and no water for basic hygiene. Well, you won’t get a lot of girls being able to go. So, if your objective is to educate more girls, and they don’t have access to water for basic hygiene at school, they are not going to go to school, right? The issue we have is that we all take water for granted. It’s there, it’s available, and we don’t really pay attention to the fact that it is so crucial to the success of what we’re trying to do. We also do not think about the fact that water cannot be managed in a piecemeal, fragmented way — we have to work on that together, bringing different skills and perspectives to the table. I believe it is important for us all to recognize that water security is not the responsibility of the water sector alone. It’s everybody’s business. If everybody can work together, toward helping people to be more water secure, then everyone’s agenda will move ahead in a better way. There are no lasting wins when people are water insecure.
How does C4W communicate the urgency of water security to global leaders and non-water sector actors who may not yet prioritize it?
Letitia: We are trying to demonstrate how collective action can be a positive way forward that gets rid of all the fragmentation and focuses on the people who are actually being served. Those who are funding activities will see results on their investment. Those who are implementing activities — whether it’s NGOs, data companies, businesses, the communities themselves or local governments — will also see lasting results from working together. If we actually pooled our resources, knowledge and innovation, we could get a much better result for those people we are trying to serve — the people who will be more water secure. It is important that we all recognize that we are not on different teams. We are all on one team.
How do you see C4W evolving over time?
Letitia Obeng: In the future, I would like C4W to fund projects that have not just come from water sector entities. Projects could be from the education sector, health sector, etc. I would like C4W to be a catalyst for helping to make people more water secure, so that all the things they want to achieve can be achieved sustainably — whether it’s in health, education or WASH.
How are local and youth voices included in C4W’s mission?
Letitia: Local communities are extremely important, wherever they are in the world. We are working to help them be more water secure. C4W will only fund projects that will make people more water secure. In order to make someone more water secure, you need to have them tell you what they need. If the proposed beneficiaries are not a part of the process, how will we know what they need and how they can contribute? And they would also have no ownership of the result. They are key to whatever we do or whatever we fund, and so they will be an integral part of the process.
I believe that it is important for the young people of today to engage and help shape the future. It’s important that we listen to them because they have a different way of looking at things. They see the future differently, and they have better tools at their fingertips to make the future a better place for themselves, their children, and their children’s children. It is absolutely imperative that the voice of youth be an integrated part of the collective action agenda, for a water secure world.