Green Water Infrastructure

How many children did you see today? Children in car seats on your way to work, your own children, or perhaps you are a teacher and you see hundreds of children each day. Consider this, one out of every six children on this planet die (that is one every 46 seconds, according to UNICEF) as a result of unsanitary water conditions. Few if any of the children you saw today will meet that demise, however, in the world there is a large number of children meeting their deaths due to something we take for granted – clean water.

It’s not about thirst . . .

Until I really read some of the articles from the WaterAid website (www.WaterAid.org) and the links I discovered there, I had an unclear understanding of what precisely causes these deaths. While it sounds as though people are dying of thirst that is not usually the case. The greater problem – the overwhelming problem, is that children are unable to get clean drinking water, and therefore die from complications due to diarrhea. Because there is no clean water nearby, people and the things they use every day cannot get washed.

. . . it’s about sanitation!

Since the sanitary conditions in these areas are practically non-existent, water is collected from the nearest source. Often times the water collected is not clean, but it is water, and no living thing lives long without water. That means people are spending hours traveling to and from dirty wells and other water sources to collect water to drink to stay alive and that water is contaminated with fecal matter. Because the drinking water is contaminated, it causes illness and often death. This is a cruel and a completely reversible cycle.

How can you help?

By contributing to WaterAid, BloggersUnite, and other water conscious action groups you can help build wells for clean water. Reading their blogs and reposting them or blogging about them will create an awareness of this electronic call to action. Those of us who watch the water run down the sink as we brush our teeth, and stand in the shower letting gallons of potable water run down the drain as we relax, must consider – if nothing else – contributing money to help this humanitarian cause. As you decide what you want to do this weekend during your free time, remember the mother who must spend 5-6 hours a day traveling to the closest filthy well to fill a jerry-can with water to take back to her waiting children. Make a difference because you can. Pass it on and commit to helping those much less fortunate than ourselves.