This is my third year of participating in Blog Action Day, the annual event held every October 15 that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking a global discussion and driving collective action. 2008’s Blog Action Day was about poverty; 2009’s was about climate change. My particular slant for Blog Action Day has been how folks are deploying stories and storytelling in service of the social change concerning each year’s Blog Action Day issue.

Here are some ways concerned activists are telling water stories for change:

• Unquestionably, the best-known water-story effort is charity:water, the non-profit organization that brings clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. (charity:water’s instructional graphic is above). 100 percent of public donations to charity:water directly fund water projects. See the story of the organization, in a video that Mario Vellandi says “uses the power of founder-narrated storytelling to describe the history and mission of an organization.” charity:water’s sister site, MyCharityWater, enables people to join in the activism and fundraising:

  In September of 2008, over 800 people gave up birthday gifts and asked for donations from friends, family and strangers. Together with matching gifts, almost $1,000,000 was raised to bring clean water to people in Ethiopia. We knew they were on to something. Since then, we’ve been busy building a website where everybody can give up their birthday, but also use weddings, anniversaries and holidays — run marathons, climb mountains and jump out of planes — or just create a fundraising page to give people clean drinking water.


• The folks who brought us The Story of Stuff (primarily Annie Leonard) this year introduced The Story of Bottled Water, which tells the story of manufactured demand — how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows from the tap. Over seven minutes, the film explores the bottled water industry’s attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call to ‘take back the tap,’ not only by making a personal commitment to avoid bottled water, but by supporting investments in clean, available tap water for all.
• The Groundwater Story, part of the King County (WA) Groundwater Protection Program, describes the importance of groundwater to living things — including people — and how to help protect this hidden resource.

• Canada’s Eco-Kids site features The Story of Water, which gives facts about water, including usage and conservation. Aimed at kids.
• National Geographic has a couple of photo stories, Fresh Water asks: “Will there be enough [water] for a more crowded world?” World Water Day Pictures: Epic Disappearing Acts, which notes, “United Nations water experts are warning that human activities—especially population growth, industrial pollution, and climate change—are degrading our planet’s limited supply of fresh water.” My friend Lou Hoffman (who will be the Q&A subject in this space starting Monday, Oct. 18) wrote about the storytelling power of these photo shows:

  The main takeaway from these pictures is that water — at its core — is life. Without a doubt, it is an element that we need to save, especially as the world population keeps growing. It as if the earth — via National Geographic photographers — has presented its own photo album to the world, saying, “‘Look here’…’Be forewarned’…’I’m almost empty.’” The other element about impactful photos is that viewers can immediately identify with them and — if they are anything like me — immediately insert themselves in the picture. I’ll remember those photos long after reading the content of an entire article. Need I even say it? A picture is worth a thousand words. The best storytellers understand how to use photos to tell the story.