ABOUT THE PRESIDENTIAL CONFERENCE

Rotary International President 2017/18 Ian Riseley invites you to join him at the Presidential Peacebuilding Conference 2018.

To highlight the areas in which Rotary does its most significant work, RI President-elect Ian H.S. Riseley will convene six presidential peacebuilding conferences in the first half of 2018.

They'll focus on how peace relates to each of Rotary's five other areas of focus as well as environmental sustainability.

Clean water and sanitation is a human right. When people, especially children, have access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene, they become healthier and a cycle of positive changes occur, like: poverty reduction, socio-economic development, drop in illness and death from diseases. However, many countries are challenged to provide these basic necessities to their populations, leaving people at risk for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH)-related diseases. Sufficient and better quality drinking-water and basic sanitation, combined with teaching good hygiene practices in schools and encouraging children to demonstrate good hygiene to their families and community is one method to cut the toll of lives lost dramatically.

Almost 200 million days of school attendance are lost every year because of the lack of proper sanitation. Many diarrhea cases in children result from transmission of disease in schools rather than at home.

''A school is a place where children should feel safe, not a place where they are susceptible to infection," says Lizette Burgers, senior adviser of UNICEF's Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in Schools program.

Rotary members are providing communities with sustainable access to safe water, improved sanitation, hygiene management training.

Rotary don't just build wells and walk away.

Rotary members integrate water, sanitation, and hygiene into education projects. When children learn about disease transmission and practice good hygiene, they miss less school. And they can take those lessons home to their families, expanding our impact.

Rotary Presidential PEACE Building Conference 2018 is designed to offer a wealth of significant information, a forum of ideas, and an avenue for discussion about WATER concerns particularly in the Middle East. It will highlight WATER situations in schools and among school­ chiIdren.

It will address WATER education among communities, down to the grassroots level. It will simultaneously hold a project fair showcasing best practices in water and water-related projects particularly in schools .

At the end of this healthy exchange, it is the conference's objective to produce concrete actions from the conference participants towards the improvement of man's precious resource, WATER.