Glastonbury Festival

WaterAid and Glastonbury Festival 2004

2004 was a terrific year once again year for WaterAid at Glastonbury.

This was our tenth anniversary year as one of the three official charities and so much was achieved to celebrate this. The Festival gave us a unique opportunity for a huge boost in funds and awareness raising - which was topped off by a fantastically generous donation of £120,000 from the Eavis family. This is enough to provide 8,000 people with safe water, sanitation and hygiene education for life.

All in all we received a staggering £20,000 in donations from Festival-goers, £9,000 more than last year, through donations made at our ever popular and highly clean African latrines and at our tent next to the Pyramid stage. A raffle of signed framed celebrity photographs was very popular as were our high quality rain macs in the inclement weather! The poo costume made its debut appearance front of stage and was very well received, prompting many donations from an inquisitive crowd.

In addition, 10,082 people signed our “Flush out poverty” petition, calling for the UK government to increase aid spending on water and sanitation, bringing our total to 39,627 signatories. Our backstage team secured immense celebrity support for the Flush out poverty campaign as well as bringing in lots of press interviews and photographs with the poo costume, which introduced itself to numerous celebrities. The organisers of the Dance Tent raised £650 through an online auction of a T-shirt signed by all performing artists.

We were delighted to have a team of 88 volunteers representing WaterAid this year. For the first time we had a team of 50 volunteers helping to keep the festival site clean, a clear link to the environmental sanitation side of our work. They worked throughout the eight Workers Beer Company bars, litter picking and recycling to ensure that environmental sanitation standards remained high.

Stage banners on the Pyramid and Other stages showed equal prominence with the other two Festival charities, Greenpeace and Oxfam. WaterAid worked with Glastonbury on a poster campaign around the site to discourage urinating in the hedges and streams and our “turn off the tap” and “wash your hands” posters promoted our important messages all over the Festival site.

Away from Somerset, the Festival also helped WaterAid with further fundraising. In May an eBay auction of hospitality tickets raised over £20,000 and considerably raised WaterAid’s profile whilst securing some key new donors and supporters.

Clare Davies
Corporate & Events Fundraising Manager
WaterAid Charity No. 288701

What Glastonbury does for WaterAid

Glastonbury Festival is a major highlight of WaterAid's year. The money raised through Glastonbury Festival is invaluable to our work and the profile we gain from our involvement is priceless.

Glastonbury Festival provides WaterAid with a free stand right next to the Pyramid stage. From there we hand out drinking water to festival goers who often give a donation in return for this service. This also gives us an opportunity to tell them more about WaterAid's work, and how they can help to provide clean water to some of the 1.1 billion people in the world who do not have access to it.

Glastonbury provides an ideal opportunity for WaterAid to talk to members of the public about the importance of safe drinking water and hygienic toilets, as these are high priorities for festival-goers.

In addition to the drinking water giveaway at the main stage, WaterAid provided sanitation and hygiene services to the whole Glastonbury Festival site: our posters reminded people of the importance of washing hands after using the toilets, and also asked them to turn off water taps after use. These eye-catching signs were posted on toilets and tap stands everywhere to help keep Worthy Farm and the festival goers clean and safe.

WaterAid's African style pit-latrines offer clean, safe toilets and enable people to learn more about WaterAid's work. There are 2.4 billion people in the world who don’t have anywhere safe and clean to go the toilet - Glastonbury Festival enables us to take this message to members of the public and enlist their support through donations and awareness raising.

A child dies every 15 seconds from water-related diseases - a shocking statistic, especially when so much can be done. Less than £15 can provide a person in the developing world with a supply of water, access to sanitation and hygiene education.

The donation WaterAid receives from Glastonbury Festival is vitally important in helping to prevent deaths, stop the spread of diseases and dramatically improve the quality of many people's lives.

For more information about WaterAid please visit: www.wateraid.org

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