WaterAid India launches ‘Dreams for Sale’ Campaign

A campaign that narrates about dreams lost due to lack of clean water

In a country where 163 million Indians lack access to clean water, making everyday a struggle for survival, the non-profit WaterAid India working towards access to clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene, announced the launch of their latest campaign ‘Dreams for Sale’.

The campaign brings to the fore a stark reality – imagine giving up on your dreams just because of not having access to clean water. When clean water becomes a rarity, it keeps children away from school, denies women and men opportunities to earn a livelihood, ruins health, forces migration, keeps communities backward and devastates dreams. The job of fetching water takes up hours every day and robs everyone but primarily women and children of the time for leading more fulfilling and productive lives.

In order to raise awareness about how lack of access to clean water gravely affects millions of people in India, the campaign chose to put up for sale the dreams of several people from the dry and arid region of Bundelkhand – villages in Chitrakoot and Banda – where accessing a few buckets of water is a daily struggle.

The campaign opens a window into the lives of ordinary people on ‘www.wateraidindia.in/dreamsforsale’ a specially created microsite – featuring their daily life, struggles, aspirations and dreams. The call to ‘save a dream’ on the microsite leads to giving them a chance to pursue their dreams by donating to the cause of access to clean water. WaterAid India will drive this campaign through short films, photographs, stories and facts using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and website www.wateraid.org/in

Avinash Kumar, Director-Programmes & Policy at WaterAid India said:

“It was frustrating to see how lack of clean water is holding communities back in these difficult to access areas as they spend hours collecting water from unclean sources. Children, often, are unable to go to school, as they have to fetch water from the only water source available in the village. The campaign aims to help these people access clean water closer to home so that they can focus on chasing their dreams”.

Nanditta Chibber, Manager, Media & Communications at WaterAid India said:

 “The lack of access to clean water pauses and many a times even erases the chance for millions of people to pursue their dreams. The campaign ‘Dreams for Sale’ through stark narratives of people not only aims to create awareness about how severe lack of access to something as basic as clean water affects lives – health, livelihood, education – but also how it kills dreams and aspirations. The campaign’s concept takes a cue from online shopping portals, except that here a ‘sale’ is actually the ‘support’ to bring clean water closer to their homes and give their dreams a fair chance.”

The campaign launched at a national level through social media portals underlines the daily struggles and sacrifices that people endure just for a few litres of water, which is mostly not even clean. “Children are the worst affected by this daily struggle of water. They drink dirty water and often fall sick… the future of this entire generation is at stake,” shares Awadh Bihari, Village Pradhan, Jariha in Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh who dreams of providing a good and healthy life to not just his children but also the entire village. The hours spent in just to fulfil their daily quest for clean water leads to letting go of dreams like the chance to attend school, study to become a teacher, a doctor or earning a simple livelihood, trapping them further in a circle of poverty and hardships.

The campaign has been conceptualised by OgilvyOne.

Sidharth Shukla, Head, OgilvyOne, North India said:

“Lack of access to clean water is literally holding back communities and people, especially kids from moving forward, from dreaming, from having ambitions and then being able to work towards fulfilling them. Life is about dreaming, it is not fair that people are unable to even work towards fulfilling their dreams because of something as basic as clean water. This is what the campaign is all about. Through ‘Dreams for Sale’ campaign, we at OgilvyOne are really trying to play our part to create awareness about the hardships that millions have to endure in their everyday lives.”

A recent global report released by WaterAid, ‘The Water Gap – State of the World’s Water 2018’ ranked India on top with 163.1 million inhabitants living without access to safe water close to home. According to the report, the poorest and least powerful are most often without clean water, along with those who are older, ill, disabled, live in a remote or rural location or have been displaced.

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