Water is an integral part of our ecosystem, preserving life, maintaining the natural forests, and nurturing flora and fauna. Yet its course is also a saga of degradation, deterioration, and diminishing resources, striking at the very roots of human existence.

In the struggle for life, women and children play a silent role in making water available to their families and loved ones. In both rural and urban areas of much of the world, collecting water is a woman's task.

With growing water scarcity, women and girls must travel longer distances to obtain water, a chore that often occupies several hours of the day. In some cases, women and children leave at dawn travelling miles to the nearest well, sometimes returning at midnight laden with containers of water. A woman might have to spend an entire night waiting at distant water pumps for her turn to fill her water container.