Today’s water crisis is not an issue of scarcity, but of access.
Today’s water crisis is not an issue of scarcity, but of access. More people in the world own cell phones than have access to a toilet. And as cities and slums grow at increasing rates, the situation worsens. Every day, lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills thousands, leaving others with reduced quality of life.
Glass ceilings aside, millions of women are prohibited from accomplishing little more than survival. Not because of a lack of ambition, or ability, but because of a lack of water. Millions of women and children in the developing world spend untold hours daily, collecting water from distant, often polluted sources, then return to their villages carrying their filled 40 pound jerry cans on their backs. And though women are responsible for the majority of food production in their villages, their productivity is severely limited by this constant struggle.
But the real tragedy is that the problem is so easy to solve. For just $25 www.water.org can provide clean, sustainable drinking water for one person for life, bringing opportunity, hope and possibilities to lives without them.
- In just one day, more than 200 million hours of women’s time is consumed for the most basic of human needs — collecting water for domestic use.
- This lost productivity is greater than the combined number of hours worked in a week by employees at Wal*Mart, United Parcel Service, McDonald’s, IBM, Target, and Kroger, according to Gary White, co-founder of Water.org.
- Millions of women and children spend several hours a day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources.
- A study by the International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) of community water and sanitation projects in 88 communities found that projects designed and run with the full participation of women are more sustainable and effective than those that do not. This supports an earlier World Bank study that found that women’s participation was strongly associated with water and sanitation project effectiveness.
- 884 million people lack access to safe water supplies; approximately one in eight people.
- 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease.
- The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.
- Poor people living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city.
- An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.
- Diarrhea remains in the second leading cause of death among children under five globally. Nearly one in five child deaths – about 1.5 million each year – is due to diarrhea. It kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.
- Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.
- Diarrhea is more prevalent in the developing world due, in large part, to the lack of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, as well as poorer overall health and nutritional status.
- Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time.
- In the developing world, 24,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes like diarrhea contracted from unclean water.
- 1.4 million children die as a result of diarrhea each year.
- At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.
- The majority of the illness in the world is caused by fecal matter.
- Almost one-tenth of the global disease burden could be prevented by improving water supply, sanitation, hygiene and management of water resources. Such improvements reduce child mortality and improve health and nutritional status in a sustainable way.
- 88% of cases of diarrhea worldwide are attributable to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation or insufficient hygiene. (9)
- 90% of all deaths caused by diarrheal diseases are children under 5 years of age, mostly in developing countries. (8)
- It is estimated that improved sanitation facilities could reduce diarrhea-related deaths in young children by more than one-third. If hygiene promotion is added, such as teaching proper hand washing, deaths could be reduced by two thirds. It would also help accelerate economic and social development in countries where sanitation is a major cause of lost work and school days because of illness. (6)
What Can You Do?
Join us as we combat the water crisis and work for the day when women are free from the all consuming search for water, making it possible for them to lead productive lives of hope and dignity in a world where everyone in the world can take a safe drink of water.
- Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter with our latest stories, projects, and ways you can help.
- Bring someone clean water for life: Donate.
- Get involved in your school, your community or go online and spread the word.
- Check out the Give Yourself section below for more ideas.
Water isn’t just a world crisis, it’s a women’s crisis. We can change the world, and we can do it one woman at a time if we have to.
Give Your Voice
We know you want to help, but we also know cash might not be that easy to come by. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do.
You’re an influential person. No really. Whether your network includes thousands of dedicated followers or just a few close friends and family members, people listen to you. And getting our message out is worth plenty. While we can’t pay you to use your sway, we can make it easy and effective. We’ve created some social networking resources – avatars, signatures and the like — for you to use wherever and whenever you want, each with it’s own assigned virtual value. Using them is almost like making a cash donation, and best of all, they’ll make a difference. So use them everywhere and often.
Put your Facebook, Twitter or blog power to work for women around the world. If enough people spread the word, we figure that’s a donation worth millions in saved advertising dollars; money we can put to work providing water.
On the other hand, if you do happen to find a little something between the couch cushions, we happily accept cash donations
