This year’s Drinking Water Week theme is There When You Need It. Highlight the reliability of drinking water for your customers through articles in the local newspaper, social media posts, educational activities at the local school, or simply by talking about it at the city council meeting.
Drinking Water Week is a ready-made platform to educate the public, connect with the community and promote employee morale. Too often, water utilities receive publicity only when something negative happens, like a water main breaks or rate increase. Drinking Water Week celebrations give you an opportunity for positive customer engagement.
Use the AWWA online toolkit to find logos, print ads, radio scripts, city proclamation templates, and art contest information that any utility can use to engage their customers. AWWA has official logos and web banners, proclamations, press release templates, activities for children and social media posts that you can access for free on the DWW Materials webpage.
The purpose of Drinking Water Week is to connect water users with water utilities. Challenge your utility to try one new way of connecting with your customers this year:
- Use the social media hashtag, #DrinkingWaterWeek in your posts.
- Share the Drinking Water Week social media posts your city or utility’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
- Use AWWA’s Drinking Water Week press releases, add your local flair and send to your local newspaper.
- Use the AWWA proclamation template and have your city council officially recognize Drinking Water Week.
- Create a pop-up event at a local park or event with a water relay game for kids, an identify the source map challenge, a water taste test, and a game for adults to prioritize real-life projects and maintenance needs.
- Invite the community to an open house at your utility. Give tours. Show the public where their clean, safe drinking water comes from and how much care it is given before it gets to their faucet.
WSU Environmental Finance Center would like to collect stories about what you are doing, or have done in the past for Drinking Water Week. Send stories (a few sentences is all we need) to tonya.bronleewe@wichita.edu. Or tag @WSUEFC in your social media posts. Your stories will be shared through social media posts to encourage other utilities.
Our challenge for every drinking water utility is to do at least one community engagement activity during Drinking Water Week. The effort to build more awareness will reap the rewards of more support for your water utility. With more support comes more appreciation of our vital and reliable drinking water utilities. What will your utility do this year? Let us know in the comments below!