Erin Huber Rosen has been working in nonprofits since the age of 16, when she started an organization to deliver blankets to people experiencing homelessness in Cleveland. Now, she’s a rural water, sanitation and hygiene expert, and founder and executive director of Drink Local Drink Tap.
“I’ve just really always cared a lot about people and the environment, and working in water was one way that I could tie a lot of equity and suffering issues that I cared about together and try to make a difference,” Huber Rosen told the Cleveland Jewish News last November.
At that point, she estimated that she’s helped over 51,000 people access safe water every day, and over 16,000 people with safe sanitation. In the Cleveland area, her team educates youth about water and inspires them to serve the environment and others. Drink Local Drink Tap works far beyond the Cleveland area, too — in Uganda, the organization works to combat the country’s water, sanitation and hygiene crisis. There, Drink Local Drink Tap has built 137 water and sanitation facilities, from wells and latrines to bathing and handwashing stations. Huber Rosen is also an advisory board member for the Family Spirit AIDS Orphanage and Child Care Centre in Uganda.
At 2 p.m. today in the hall of Philosophy, Huber Rosen closes the Week Eight Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “Water: A Metaphor for Life,” talking about the very real impact clean water access has on communities.
“There is no reason we should live in a world where a child under 6 dies every 20 seconds due to unsafe water and plastic beaches are forming on our coasts,” she told Cleveland State Magazine.
An alumni of Cleveland State, Huber Rosen received the university’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012, and was included in CSU’s first class of Fascinating Alumni in 2015. In 2019, she made Crain’s Cleveland’s Forty Under 40 list; other accolades include being named one of Cleveland Magazine’s “Most Interesting People” for 2012 and “Best Activist” by Cleveland Scene Magazine in 2017.
In addition to being a clean water advocate and social entrepreneur, Huber Rosen is also the author of Make Waves 4 Change, a book designed to inspire the next generation of civic leaders, and a documentary filmmaker with three films under her belt — including serving as producer of the 2014 documentary “Making Waves,” and the executive producer and director of the 2020 documentary “The Last Drop.” She currently serves on the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition Advisory Board for the State of Ohio, the Greater Cleveland Water Equity Partners Board, and is an active member of the Uganda Water and Sanitation Network and Sanitation and Water for All.
Speaking with Crain’s Cleveland for her Forty Under 40 profile, Huber Rosen said that while she doesn’t believe the world’s water crisis will ever be solved, “in the developed world, we have technology to do water way better than we’re doing it. We’re wasting a ton of water and we’re not managing our land properly to filter water naturally before it goes into our waterways.”
