Clean water is vital—but it's one step in bringing better health to an extremely poor community. If children have parasites or suffer from water-borne illnesses, drinking clean water won't cure them. They need medicine. And in order to break the cycle of sickness, sanitation and better hygiene must be part of the solution too.
You can help deliver this lasting impact to a thirsty community.
By donating $44 a month for three months, you'll help address each of these issues in a desperate community that lacks clean water. Your first month's donation provides the 44-Cent Cure to 100 children. The second month goes to water. $44 is enough to bring clean water to two people for 20 years. Now that's long-term change! In the third month, you'll help provide sanitation and hygiene training to keep families healthy.
Have you ever been really thirsty? It's not a good feeling. When you and I experience momentary discomfort like this, we can only begin to imagine what it might be like to live with thirst—every day. Thankfully, we can turn on the tap and get a drink any time.
In Sub-Saharan
Africa, diarrhea is
now the single
biggest killer of
children under 5.
–World Health Organization
Khaira Abdi knows what real thirst is. Searching for water consumes her entire day. The mother of three treks back and forth to a storage pond in her village of Amuma, hauling 40-pound jerry cans to her family—every day. The water pan is the only source of water in Amuma, a Kenyan town near the Somalia border in the drought-prone Horn of Africa region.
"Here, there is no well. We'll be in trouble just like before if rain doesn't fall soon," she said, straining to lift another jug from the murky, shallow water pan.
Khaira is not alone. In this culture, collecting water is seen as a woman's job. Men take care of the herds, so mothers often have no choice but to leave their children unsupervised while they collect water. "Residents trek for miles to reach a well, some as far as 27 kilometers (17 miles)," said a young man named Abdullahi, who lives in a nearby village.
World Concern is a Christian humanitarian organization that focuses on sustainable development for the poor in Africa, Asia and the Americas. We work in some of the world’s most remote places, offering life, opportunity and hope to 6 million people a year in the name of Christ.
Learn more about us at www.worldconcern.org.
Ready to take the challenge? We're asking people to go a day without water on Saturday, June 30. Go and visit worldconcern.org/NoWater and let us know you're pledging to go without water that day. Then, tell us about your experience on Facebook on July 1.
