Clean Water: Vital to Saving Animals, People, and the Planet
“As part of our campaign to end the Deforestation Crisis in Bolivia, Well Beings is supporting local indigenous communities who are protectors of the Amazon. Your support is helping provide two freshwater wells in two villages where the locals not only call the rainforest home, but depend on it for their livelihood.
Clean water is the foundation of all human development and, unlike many of the world’s problems, we know exactly how to solve it. We spoke to Christoph Gorder who leads programs at charity: water, the dynamic and disruptive nonprofit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries.”
Why water?
785 million people in the world live without clean water. That’s nearly 1 in 10 people worldwide. Or, twice the population of the United States. The majority live in isolated rural areas and spend hours every day walking to collect water for their family. Not only does walking for water keep children out of school or take up time that parents could be using to earn money, but the water often carries diseases that can make everyone sick. Diseases from dirty water kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. In Africa alone, women spend 40 billion hours a year walking for water. These people need our help!
What does it mean to get access to clean water?
Access to clean water means education, income, and health - especially for women and kids.
When a community gets water, women, and girls get their lives back. They start businesses, improve their homes, and take charge of their own futures. Less time collecting water means more time in class. Clean water and proper toilets at school mean teenage girls don’t have to stay home for a week out of every month. Water changes everything.
How is charity: water tackling the water crisis?
We help communities around the world get access to clean water by partnering with local organizations to build water systems. Those water systems are very diverse because the people we help live in a wide range of environments—jungles in the Central African Republic, mountains in Nepal, deserts in Mali. In Ethiopia, for example, a common solution is a drilled well that’s about 150 feet deep with a handpump that serves a village of 250 people and costs about $10,000. In Rwanda, it’s a massive 30-mile piped network with pumping stations and reservoirs that might serve 15,000 people and costs over $1 million. Since we were founded in 2006, we’ve provided clean water to over 11 million people.
What is your background and how did that help prepare you for the work you do?
Prior to working at charity: water, I spent almost 15 years working for a disaster response organization. Our focus was medical and I worked with local hospitals, clinics and Ministries of Health all over the world, including here in the US. For several years, I was a first responder and running field operations after earthquakes and hurricanes and wars. After the initial response, we’d take on major reconstruction projects and we rebuilt a lot of hospitals and healthcare facilities.
Has COVID-19 infected the parts of the world where you work? How are they dealing with this killer virus?
COVID-19 is now in every country we’re working in. It’s a huge concern because of how weak the healthcare systems are in the developing world. A number of developing countries don’t even have a single ventilator in the whole country. So, the strategy can’t really rely on flattening the curve; there just aren’t enough hospital beds. The strategy needs to be about preventions, and that’s precisely were clean water and health education—our everyday work—is critically valuable.
Our partners have been leveraging their expertise for direct response against this pandemic. They’re building handwashing stations at clinics and public locations like markets. They’re distribution PPE to frontline workers and supplying vulnerable families with soap and hygiene materials. And, a big effort is being placed on health education, promoting handwashing, and training community health workers. Here’s an example of a song one of our partners in Uganda commissioned to educate communities about the dangers of COVID-19: https://soundcloud.com/thewatertrust/coronavirus-song
To learn more about charity: water and how you can help, please visit: https://www.charitywater.org
To support the Well Beings campaign to help build wells in Bolivia, click here.
