Andra Tamburro

Andra Tamburro "is a director at Water Advocates and in charge of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Education (WASH) in Schools Initiative. This Initiative, building on the current work of UNICEF, governments, and NGOs around the world, focuses on addressing one of the key development challenges of our time - getting water and sanitation to schools and schoolchildren in the developing world. The problem is not insurmountable, but it is large: only 50% of the developing world’s schools have access to water and sanitation. This WASH in Schools initiative is designed to communicate, particularly to Americans, the story of WASH in schools, and to generate momentum so that as many schools as possible in the developing world get access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene over the coming years.

"Andra Tamburro, Program Director for the WASH in Schools Initiative, has experience working on both rural and urban water and sanitation projects. Before coming to Water Advocates, she consulted for the William J. Clinton Foundation and Africare where she helped to create water and sanitation strategies for these organizations. From 1995-2000 she worked in the Office of Urban programs at USAID, where one of her main focuses was to provide managerial and technical support to water and sanitation programs in South Asian cities, where she examined the social, economic and environmental issues related to providing water and sanitation services to people living in peri-urban and slum areas. She began her water and sanitation career by working on a rural water and sanitation project, through the Aga Khan Foundation, Canada, in Gujarat, India. In India, she worked with a NGO that focused on organizing and training women water and sanitation committees to promote proper water usage, healthy hygiene habits, and maintenance of the water points. Andra Tamburro has a Bachelor of Science in Economics and a Master in Environmental Studies."