The 1st of July marked the start of IGRAC’s new volunteer programme, the Groundwater Correspondents Network. This new programme tries to give a global platform to local stories and to elevate the voices of those who are usually not heard.
After receiving an overwhelming number of applications, 17 correspondents from 17 different countries were selected for this first wave of correspondents.
The 2023 group’s untold stories
Did you know that Brazil has a very unique stone mangrove system with huge social importance to a local community of descendants of fugitive slaves? Or that a groundwater project in Beni, DR Congo, helps to reduce the cases of sexual violence against women and young girls, because they no longer have to wake up before sunrise and cross dangerous areas in search for water? Or did you already know that a group of women in Kavre, Nepal, has managed to successfully revive a critical spring by constructing a recharge pond?
These are only three out of the more than 30 stories that this first group of correspondents is planning to tell in the upcoming two years. These stories will either be in writing or film and will be published on IGRAC’s stories section. In addition, IGRAC will publish a yearly magazine to bundle all the stories that has been written that year.
Meet the Groundwater Correspondents
Get involved
Did you miss the call to become part of this first group of correspondents, but do you have interesting groundwater stories to tell? Don't worry, because there will be future possibilities to join the network.
Currently, the network includes correspondents from 17 countries, but the ultimate ambition would be to eventually grow towards a network with a correspondent in each country. Each year we will expand this group with new correspondents from countries that are not yet represented in the network and after two years, correspondents will make way for a new correspondent from the same country.
The next selection process will take place in May 2024. Interested in becoming part of the second wave of groundwater correspondents? Contact: correspondents@un-igrac.org.
First story
The Groundwater Correspondents Network already yielded a first story. In Turkana's Silent Struggle, battling the effects of fluoride, our Kenya correspondent Etukutan Peter took a deep dive into the groundwater quality challenges that impacts the local community in multiple ways.
