Clean water saves lives

As a child, I couldn't understand why water was such a pressing concern in the Third World. Perhaps it was because I was unable to comprehend living in a world where clean water didn't come out of a tap or because other problems seemed so much bigger and more important. But over the past few years, my perspective has changed.

I traveled to Peru in 2003 to learn more about community development work. I spent several days walking up and down the dusty hills of a poor neighbourhood in Lima, learning about programs for battered women and volunteer-run libraries for children. One of my most vivid memories is of watching a water truck stop at house after house to pour families' weekly water allowances into large, filthy trash cans. It was then that the significance hit me: The impoverished woman whose shack I had just stepped out of would have to use this small amount of water for drinking, cooking, cleaning, laundry and bathing for an entire week. Never mind that it was filthy enough to get her and her children sick; it was all she had.

James Addis of World Vision Magazine, a publication for the organization, says of the pressing importance of water that "It might seem incredible that grievous problems – problems that have been evident for centuries – could have a simple solution, but they do. It's water. Ironically, in an age where we can send astronauts into outer space, one in five people in the developing world – 1.1 billion people – struggle in abject poverty for want of a basic natural resource."

While in India last year to research the HIV/AIDS crisis, I again noticed the lack of clean water in impoverished communities, but finally I understood the ramifications of the problem. Without clean water, the children I met in HIV/AIDS community centres would never be able to get all the dirt off their skin, would never be truly healthy due to waterborne diseases and would never be as economically efficient as they would be in a life like yours or mine, where clean water simply comes out of a tap.

I realize now that water, while a seemingly "small," problem, is actually, as Addis puts it "incredible." In fact, it just might be everything.

Embry Owen
Junior Journalist

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Free The Children is the largest network of children helping children through education in the world, with more than one million youth involved in our innovative education and development programs in 45 countries. Founded by international child rights activist Craig Kielburger, Free The Children has an established track-record of success, with three nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize and partnerships with the United Nations and Oprah’s Angel Network.