For the 13^th consecutive year, the Ohio City nonprofit group Drink Local Drink Tap will partner with the United Nations in celebrating World Water Day (WWD) on Tuesday, March 22.

Started in 1993, WWD celebrates water and raises awareness of the 2 billion people living without access to safe water. The day is about taking action to tackle our global water crisis. Each year focuses on a different theme, and this year’s theme is Groundwater: Making the Invisible Visible.

Groundwater is an incredibly vital resource that is all around us, but easy to forget because it's out of sight. Groundwater provides drinking water for as much as 50% of the global population and accounts for 43% of all water used for irrigation, according to the Groundwater Project, a global nonprofit organization based in Canada. Worldwide, 2.5 billion people depend solely on groundwater resources to satisfy their basic daily water needs.

“Since 2010, Drink Local Drink Tap has celebrated World Water Day in Cleveland because water is life,” says Drink Local Drink Tap founder and executive director Erin Huber. “Living with 20% of the world’s freshwater in our backyard makes the Great Lakes Region richer than most of the world. [Drink Local Drink Tap] believes that World Water Day gives everyone an opportunity to think about how to protect and conserve water and improve water equity.”

On WWD, fourth through eighth grade students and educators can join Drink Local Drink Tap’s event from anywhere. On-demand virtual exhibits will be available from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with the live-streamed main event broadcasting from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and will include a Q&A session with the Drink Local Drink Tap team.

The event will help participants discover the importance groundwater plays in our everyday lives and learn how to make waves for change that positively impact groundwater in the community.

Drink Local Drink Tap’s mission is to improve water equity through projects, programming, and partnerships in the belief clean water is a human right. More than 32,000 people now have access to clean water as a result of Drink Local Drink Tap’s water infrastructure projects in Uganda.

Additionally, with the help of Cleveland-based volunteers, in the past 12 years Drink Local Drip Tap has engaged more than 17,000 young people to remove more than 12,500 pounds of trash on
The organization partners with the Cleveland Metroparks and the Alliance for the Great Lakes adopt-a-beach program and hosts many public and private beach clean ups each year throughout the summer season. 

“World Water Day gives us time to reflect on our relationship with water and our responsibility to protect it,” says Erin Huber. “It’s a time when we can be inspired to take action to both improve water equity’s and quality because water is life.”

To participate in Drink Local Drink Tap’s virtual event, register here. Individual students can register, or teachers can register their entire classes.