Imagine you’re relaxing at home, and all of a sudden, you need to use the sink to get a drink or wash your hands. But the water doesn’t come on, so you try every sink in the house. Nothing. Now you’re left sitting there with no water in the entire house until the plumber comes and fixes it up.

Consistent with www.thp.org, a website, for 1.7 billion people, this is considered “normal.”

But if these people don’t have running water, they can’t just call up a plumber. Most of them don’t even have sinks or toilets! So instead, they have to walk six kilometers every day to retrieve water from the nearest water source, which primarily means a filthy pond, lake, or river (www.one.org).

According to www.one.org, women have way more responsibility to retrieve water than the men do, almost two times the responsibility. As a result, women go uneducated because instead of being in school, they go fetch water for the family. This means that most women don’t have any hope for a better life because they don’t have the education needed for a successful occupation.

Even though women bring back as much water as they can every day, the family still doesn’t have enough water. And the water they do have often times gives them diseases, sickness, or death.

Another problem with not having a clean water facility nearby is that while the women get water, things don’t get done around the house like they would if the women were home. That responsibility is passed on to the children while their mom is away. But aren’t children supposed to be having fun and learning from the adventures they have in the world?

Several things can be done so that people have access to clean water. One thing is to dig wells in developing countries. Many churches participate in this already, but even if you don’t go to church, form a group of people that share the same vision as you and go help the people that so desperately need you.

You could also send clean water to people by physically taking it to them, or by giving it to a friend, or someone you know that is going somewhere to help people have access to clean water.

There are also many organizations that you could support, such as Food for the Hungry or The Hunger Project that give water to the needy.
As stated by Jean-Michel Cousteau, “We have the ability to provide clean water for every man, woman and child on the Earth. What has been lacking is the collective will to accomplish this. What are we waiting for? This is the commitment we need to make to the world, now.”