World Water Day

Today, March 22, is World Water Day. In an ideal world, I would have had the time to research and then write an inspiring and informative post about why this is important. [Okay, in an ideal world, there would be no need for World Water Day because everyone on the planet would have access to a safe, secure water supply.]

Instead of freshly-scribed inspiring prose from me, I give you some key excerpts from a World Water Day website:

World Water Day is an international day of observance and action to draw attention to the plight of the more than 1 billion people world wide that lack access to clean, safe drinking water. Celebrated since 1993, World Water Day was designated in 1992 when the United Nations (UN) General Assembly passed a resolution. With each passing year, the observance has grown larger and stronger.

....

The world water crisis is one of the largest public health issues of our time. Nearly 1.1 billion people (roughly 20% of the world’s population) lack access to safe drinking water. The lack of clean, safe drinking water is estimated to kill almost 4,500 children per day. In fact, out of the 2.2 million unsafe drinking water deaths in 2004, 90% were children under the age of five.

....

Many women and young girls in rural areas in Sub-Saharan African and other parts of the world must trek as much as six miles everyday to retrieve water for their families. Due to this manual labor, such women and children are prevented from pursuing an education, maintaining their households or earning additional income.

Evidently, each year there is a theme for World Water Day. This year's theme is "Sanitation" which means exactly what you fear. Not the sexiest of topics for a blog post, I know. But the reality is the lack of adequate sanitation facilities is a huge contributor to death and disease in impoverished countries. And contributes to environmental degradation.



If helping ensure access to safe, clean water to families around the world is something you'd like to be part of, the non-profit, Water for People seems to a highly-regarded and reputable organization. On their home page, they also have several short videos clearly illustrating the problem and the solutions.

Finally, this opinion piece in the Denver Post is a good summary of the issues.

ETA: I liked this article from The Christian Science Monitor as well.