How Do You Get the World to Pay Attention to Water Scarcity?

Joey Wu, C’25, grew up in Minnesota, but he spent summers in his parents’ home country of Taiwan teaching English. One of those summers brought a typhoon that devastated the area and when residents turned on their taps, the water flowed yellow with minerals. In 2021, water stress hit closer to home when Hurricane Ida flooded Philadelphia, and many were unsure of where to get clean, safe water.

These moments had a lasting impact on Wu.

“The idea that something I considered to be such a natural part of life—water—could be unreliable was shocking to me. Now I am keenly aware of how big an issue water insecurity is around the world,” says Wu, a double major in earth science and bioengineering in the Vagelos Integrated Program for Energy Research, who is also a youth delegate for the United Nations, Udall Scholar, Clinton Global Initiative University Scholar, and Millennium Fellow.

Inspired by his own experiences with water stress, in 2022 Wu launched Waterroots, a storytelling nonprofit that showcases how different cultures around the world approach water and climate insecurities. Highlighting the intersection of culture, climate change, and water protection, Waterroots uses education and community empowerment to tackle critical environmental challenges like plastic pollution and water pollution. As Wu has learned over time, cultural understanding is essential to establishing meaningful impacts in grassroots communities.

Wu offers as an example the time he showed a filter he’d invented to the former Philadelphia Water Department CEO. Though the filter worked well, Wu was informed it would never get adopted as a solution because people won’t stop drinking bottled water. “It wasn’t a technological issue, it was a social issue,” Wu reflects. “I realized in that moment that there’s such a sophisticated relationship between culture and sociology and climate that people don’t really understand. Waterroots works to empower individuals across the world to share stories from their communities, from their perspectives, and with their solutions.”

That’s something really powerful that I’ve found through this work and through storytelling in general: it has the power to shift people’s viewpoints and raise awareness in important ways.

Waterroots has 50 volunteer ambassadors and delegates in 25 countries around the world who share water stories that will live on a soon-to-launch website and through YouTube videos. Wu is the international director and founder. In this role, he oversees the volunteer team, ensures progress on projects, and facilitates partnerships and outreach to share water stories.

One such story looks at how plastic pollution is increasing malaria in Cameroon. “People are throwing plastic into the rivers, it’s clogging them up, and it’s causing stagnant pools of water that are a fertile breeding ground for mosquitos, resulting in higher incidents of malaria,” explains Wu. Other stories delve into how firefighter foam used in military testing in Guam is causing chemicals to leach into the water; how a “water mafia” emerged in Pakistan that controls the country’s “most valuable commodity;” and about the intersection between water stress and period poverty throughout Nigeria, where the same people who can’t access clean water also have issues accessing menstrual products.

Wu often travels to partner countries himself, meeting the storytellers and steeping himself in the local culture. Most recently, he visited Tanzania for two weeks to document the importance of climate justice and water security for the nomadic Maasai people there, while also learning how to cook, paint, and find water sources. Like many trips he has taken, Wu says that visit changed his perspective on a particular issue, in this case, ecotourism.

“The narrative I had going in was that ecotourism is great for people to understand nature because we see what we’re trying to protect, but that it might not be the best for the locals. What I realized is that a lot of the tour companies are providing electricity and they’re actually helping get engagement around critical issues important to the community,” Wu says. “That’s something really powerful that I’ve found through this work and through storytelling in general: it has the power to shift people’s viewpoints and raise awareness in important ways.”

Waterroots doesn’t sugarcoat the damaging impacts of climate change and water insecurity, but the organization is also committed to sharing stories of hope, local resilience, and solutions. One example is Waterroots’ partnership with local high school teachers and religious organizations in Kenya. The project, called Eco Faith, is establishing community gardens for student-led environmental change.

“Something I see in a lot of large nonprofits is that they go somewhere, they set up this thing, and then they leave, and the project doesn’t exist anymore. I knew going into Waterroots that I wanted to mobilize communities and empower local people who understand the community better than I ever could to continue the work,” Wu says.

When not focusing on Waterroots and his full-time studies, Wu is conducting research in the lab of Penn Engineering’s Samantha McBride, William K. Gemmill Term Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. The work focuses on how microplastics can end up in the water in plastic water bottles when the water is, for example, shaken, sucked through a straw, or frozen and thawed. He has also conducted research with Scott Poethig, John H. and Margaret B. Fassitt Professor in the Department of Biology, on genetically modified plants, and completed a research internship at National Taiwan University on salt-resistant genetically modified plants.

Wu is also active in multiple capacities with the United Nations. As a UN Youth Delegate, he shares youth perspectives, advocates for climate rights, and discusses specific challenges that young populations face in high-level spaces. “Since these spheres are often inaccessible to many,” Wu says, “I use my voice to advocate for marginalized populations that I represent through nonprofit activism.”

Now in his senior year, Wu is applying to master’s programs abroad in environmental or scientific communications, and he was recently named a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship in Oxford.

“As a scientist I’ve seen how people love their work, but they’re not always great at telling other people about it,” Wu says. “That storytelling component is key to bringing essential information to a larger audience and I plan to continue doing that through Waterroots and beyond.”