We can make a difference through clean water...

Last year I became acquainted with an incredible organization that is focused on digging clean water wells throughout the world. The organization is Living Water International. Their website is www.water.cc . They have drilled 30 wells in Ethiopia so far, some close to the region where Hanna was born. You can check out some of the places where they have been drilling - Click Here.

Last year in our church we took part in a campaign called Advent Conspiracy and we sent a portion of what we saved by giving relationally to Living Water. You don't have to wait until Christmas to help see wells drilled, though.

They have started a new campaign called www.onedollarwater.com . It is a simple way that you and I can make a difference by choosing to provide water for one person for one year at the cost of $1. Check out their website.

Lack of clean water is such a huge issue in the world...with diarrhea claiming the lives of over 1.8 million children per year. Its a crisis that has a solution - the drilling of simple wells - but it takes folks like you and I saying no to consumerism and saying yes to compassion to see it happen.

Here is an excerpt from their website with some simple science - "drinking poop kills."

from www.onedollarwater.com...

The science is simple: drinking poop kills.

Nobody wants to drink poop… but when water comes from a shallow well and the only place to do your business is a pit latrine, it happens.

Amoebas, cholera, shigella, campylobacter, salmonella… these parasites and bacteria have a problem: they kill their hosts. However, their survival strategy is brilliant. And gross. They multiply inside stomachs and intestines, and then cause their hosts to blast them out their colons in the messiest way possible.

This way, these microscopic killers come into contact with skin, fingers, and even dishes or unprotected drinking water, ensuring a free ride to the next host. For a human child, becoming a host may mean death.

Diarrhea vs. The Third Reich

Adolf Hitler’s rule lasted 12 years (1933-1945). His Third Reich killed between 11 and 15 million people: Jews, Soviets, Poles, Slavs, mentally handicapped people, homosexuals…

That’s at most about 1.25 million people per year.

Diarrhea kills 1.8 million children per year.1

Diarrhea wins.

In fact diarrhea kills five times more children than HIV/AIDS. Diarrhea kills more people than tuberculosis or malaria. Car crashes, cancer, war… diarrhea beats them all.2

But we’re smarter than amoebas, and we can win in the end.

How? It’s simple: drill a hole deep underground where the amoebas can’t go.

Diarrhea beats Hitler.

Deep water wells beat diarrhea.

Love wins… if we do something.

Footnotes:

1. This statistic was was calculated by the good folks over at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for their 2006 Human Development Report, Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty, and the global water crisis, and can be found on page 6.
2. Same folks, same report… page 42.