Donate NowTo bring home the gravity of the emerging water crisis, filmmaker Sanjeev Chatterjee traveled to 15 different countries. To bring it even closer, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting provided a web portal.
Chatterjee, associate dean of the University of Miami's Knight Center for International Media, is the co-producer and director of One Water, a documentary that spans from Las Vegas to Lake Victoria exploring the ways that water access and sanitation affect the lives of ordinary human beings.
On Nov. 13, Chatterjee brought his film to the College of William and Mary's Maasai American Student Association, which used the film -– and the Water Portal –- to talk with students and professors about how water is becoming an increasing concern for the world's poor -– and what the world's affluent population can do to ensure that water access remains a basic human right, not a luxury for those who can afford it.
In a taped preview before the film, Foreign Exchange's host Daljit Daliwal introduced the crowd of about 50 William and Mary students to the Water Portal, which allows users from across the globe to interact and upload their thoughts on viable solutions to the water crisis.
Students then watched One Water and participated in a question and answer session with Chatterjee and professors from the Virginia Institute for Marine Science and the College of William and Mary about the history of water access and the continuing struggle to ensure potable water for the entire world population.