CHALLENGE

Over 2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe water. But many in the U.S. don’t know about this ongoing critical issue and its disproportionate impact on women and girls, who are primarily responsible for their family’s water collection. Every aspect of their lives – schooling, physical safety, health, economic opportunity – is affected.

INSIGHT

It’s hard to imagine the plight of people on the other side of the world. So, to get Americans’ attention, we needed to find a connection with the content they were already consuming. We found it in the eerily striking parallel between the routes women were walking for water and the remote fashion runways that fill our feeds every fall.

IDEA

During New York Fashion Week, while everyone’s eyes were on the runways, Water For People set out to shift their focus to another: the one that billions of women walk every day. Shot in the Chikhaldara block of India's Maharashtra state, this runway was actually the route to clean water. The models were real women and girls from the local Korku tribe who walk that route up to six times per day. And their accessory, the water jug, was their family’s lifeline.