Water, Waste, and Poverty: QPSANZ seminar

The health of the land and water, and the woods which are the keepers of the water, are the only lasting basis for any civilization.
-Donald Wright

From the 24th to the 27th of April, about 25 Quakers gathered at the settlement in Wanganui for this year's QPSANZ seminar; titled "Water, Waste, and Poverty"
The problems we looked at, and related statistics were frequently overwhelming.
For example: 2.6 Billion people have no access to safe clean toilets. That's about 40% of global popluation!
In rural Africa: women spend an average of 26% of their time fetching water, carrying an average of 20kg.
Not everything we learned was so gloomy. In Bangladesh, there was an 11% increase in school attendance by girls following the Bangladesh School Sanitation Programme, where safe, hygenic toilets and drinking water were established in a number of schools.
There were also lectures and exercises related to global food production. These included: a dvd about the restoration of indigenous rice varieties and organic farming to Sri-Lanka, supported by the "Movement for the Protection of Indigenous Seeds" or MPIS and MONLAR; an exercise in groups where each of us took two items at random from a supermarket catalogue, and we discussed where the food item came from, and what it cost, not just monetarily but in terms of resources used in its creation; and a presentation by Rosemary Morrow on her activities using permaculture to restore livelihood to the marginalised.
Although sometimes learning about the problems of the world was overwhelming and made me wonder where one could start, I found that overall the seminar gave me confidence that even in my current position I can be of service to people who need it.