RichardRichardson

So this is the end of the poverty challenge week, and although I did crack once, it's not been the easiest thing I've ever done! Lots of travelling, working and general living have been made so much more difficult without the regular use of hot water, which I definitely didn't realise quite how much we take for granted!

It's the little things that we can all do that can make a difference, raising awareness about poverty and talking to and challenging MPs is a great way to begin bringing about change which can help those living in poverty.

I've missed a couple of days blogging, and for that I must apologise. With a funeral to go to, much travelling to be done and work to go to, I have been pretty busy, but still managing to keep my mind on the challenge this week - with 1 lapse in the challenge (yes i did use (luke) warm water to shower and shave once, but I allowed myself this as it was the morning of the funeral).

But i actually want to talk about something different, as I have been working in a bar/restaurant for the last couple of nights. This presented quite a tough challenge - defy the bosses and use cold water to wash everything in?? or work to the capacity of the place i work in? I decided on the latter, for a start I can't change the glass washers to use cold water, and there's also the lovely people from the health and safety department who I don't want to displease too much.

This made me think about the bigger scale uses of warm water that we take for granted and how much difference this could make to people living in poverty without clean warm water. I'm not pretending that places with the charm of canal street in Manchester (if you've been, you'll know what I mean...) would pop up all over the world with access to warm water, but large scale businesses that have to answer to the aforementioned lovely people from the health and safety department would certainly find life far more difficult without it. What affect does this have on the development of small businesses trying to grow in places suffering large scale poverty? Could the cleanliness and hygiene offered by such a luxury really help in this respect? Would this then creat a rolling ball of growth, adding to job creation adding further lifts away from poverty? Hard to know, but one thing is for sure, hot water could seriously help.

Today I had to travel a fair amount, from Herefordshire to Manchester and back again, and after yesterdays fiasco with the wet weather I was hoping for a better day. And in fairness it was much better, can't say I missed hot water too much except for the standard coffee cravings. But having had quite a lot of time to sit and ponder this challenge and what it means for poverty, my thoughts came to how much hot water had affected development, in terms of society and technology. 

Would motorway service stations, or hotels or gyms be so attractive and so heavily used everyday by millions of people if they lacked something like hot water?

Would any of them ever have been developed without the knowledge that free flowing hot water was so readily available?

I'm not sure if I'm getting myself into a chicken and egg situation here, but it is worth pondering the effects of water on development. Would the world's poverty stricken areas be exactly that if water was so readily available? Me thinks not.

Didn't think I'd be pushed to breaking point with this challenge quite so soon! Walking home today got soaked in the rain, arrived cold and wet and the foulness of my mood was probably matched only by the weather itself. I doubt I'm alone in Britain when I say my first reaction was to envisage a long hot bath or shower with a cuppa tea waiting for me when I got out. No such luck today! I got changed and did a few sulky star-jumps to warm up and sat down to rue the weather.

Once my mood had subsided, my thoughts started to head in a different direction. I was sat there cursing the rain that I know all too well, yet maybe 3 or 4 days ago I was reading an article about the Amazon being at it's lowest levels due to prolonged drought in South America, thinking how there must be Brazilian fishermen and farmers, for example, wishing for the regular rainfall we slate so much in this country. Whether or not this particular example is related to climate change is not for me to say, however there is no doubt that situations like this will become more common place as a result of climate change, leading to more people being exposed to poverty. 

With increased frequency of floods in South East Asia, and drought in South America, to state just two examples, how can we mitigate and help people adapt and cope with the effects of global climate change? 

Not sure I realised before today quite how much we rely on hot water, and take for granted the luxury of having running water whenever we want.

The flat was dirty when I woke today, and wanting to clean it, my first thought was to get a bowl of hot soapy water to clean and disinfect areas that needed cleaning. BUT using no hot water meant I couldn't do that. Obviously having access to soap in the first place helps with this particular case but it did help to highlight the issue here, which is the difficulty with which people living with no access to running water have to keep themselves and their homes hygienically clean and safe. A bit of dirt here or there wouldn't matter too much but it wouldn't take long for bacteria to breed and start to make places unsafe to live in. 

Such a simple point to make but it's a big problem for people living in poverty, and a problem that could potentially be solved very simply.