Mina Guli: Taking Positive Action in a Meaningful Way
June 5th is Global Running Day. Today, Wonder Woman for Water Mina Guli, CEO of Thirst Foundation, has embarked on yet another journey to highlight the need for healthy, restored rivers worldwide.
Mina is a water advocate, ultra marathon endurance runner and speaker, who believes that “every single one of us can make a difference.” And that’s exactly what she’s doing: making a remarkable difference. She just started on a 848-km (527-mile) run along the Seine River in France to draw attention to restoring healthy rivers, which, in her words, “is key to tackling the greatest challenges of our era.”
In a 2023 interview, Mina said it well when asked what steps the water industry and individuals can take immediately to deliver meaningful results:
“Our water, our responsibility. Each of us has choices to make every day. We can conserve a lot of water by taking shorter showers, thinking about the food we are consuming, and reducing waste. We also all have a vote – one that we cast for politicians and by how we spend our money. Making deliberate decisions to reward those taking positive action is a meaningful way to create change.
“The water community has been beset by silo thinking on the different aspects of UN Sustainable Development Goal 6. You can’t get clean water and sanitation to local communities without protecting and preserving the ecosystems that provide that water. We can’t have integrated water resources management without going beyond traditional boundaries.
“We need to create awareness of the urgency and scale of the problem. Rivers are drying up, but nothing is happening. The water industry also needs to get better at listening to local communities, to the people on the front lines of this, and to understand the nature of the problems that they’re facing. It is only by working together that we can make a real, meaningful impact.”
So Mina has set off on her epic run that will end on July 5th. Join her in person on the road in France, or on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media. And tell everyone you know about Mina’s quest to empower people to protect our water sources.
Who is anybody else to set a limit on me – other than me? I am the one to say what I can and cannot do.”
– Mina Guli
