Pure Water For The World

25 million people die each year from contaminated water. That’s the entire population of Canada.

Take a moment and imagine. Imagine waking up each morning with no water to brush your teeth, wash your face or bathe. No water for coffee. No water to quench your thirst. 1.2 billion people (one in six) face this reality every morning.

Now imagine a life without toilets, no latrines, and no sanitation. For 2.5 billion people (one in three), it’s a way of life. Every 15 seconds, a child dies in our world from the effects of poor water quality. It defies comprehension, doesn’t it?

Imagine that every day about 6,000 children (the equivalent of 18 fully loaded jumbo jets) die from diseases associated with the lack of safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. Two million people die each year from water related diseases, which account for 80% of all illnesses in the developing world. On any given day, half the population in the developing world is sick from just drinking water – bad water.

The Cycle of Poverty

Without clean water to drink, these people, their villages and communities are caught in a cycle of poverty. Sick children can’t learn. Parents of sick children can’t work on a regular basis. In Haiti, just 600 miles from Miami, children are not given names until they are one year old because many never reach it. This helps explain a young boy’s response to the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” His response, “Alive.”

Consider This
In 2002, at the World Summit for Sustainable Development, the United Nations created a set of “millennial development goals” for access to safe drinking water and sanitation. The community committed to cutting in half the number of people who lack these basic needs by 2015.

To achieve these targets, the UN estimates that 630 million people will need safe drinking water. That’s 175,000 a day for 10 years at a cost of $10 billion per year. The scale of the problem and the cost to fix it are paralyzing. Yet, when you put into perspective, the amount of money needed is small – In 2003 we spent $61 billion on soft drinks, $71 billion on beer. While most of us have clean water to drink all around us, we spent $21 billion on bottled water.

Start Somewhere
The goal of the Gramicci “Start Somewhere” Initiative is to Encourage, Educate, and Connect you with people and organizations that are making profound changes in the world. Pure Water For The World is one of them.

Here is their mission:
“Pure Water for the World (PWW) works in remote regions of developing countries which lack sustainable, clean, safe drinking water. We work with local governments and community partners to select, analyze the appropriate technology for the community, and to implement cost effective projects.

Our projects include a comprehensive education program to provide the community with the basic knowledge of water use, storage and personal hygiene and how all of these factors contribute to the health and well being of the users. To reinforce the health benefits of having clean, safe drinking water, we also provide parasitic treatment and the follow up and monitoring to make sure that the technologies are being used and that they are being used properly. “

Pure Water For The World uses a low cost, simple bio sand filtration system made of concrete and plastic pipe that is about the size of an office water cooler. Similar systems have been used in Europe and the US for centuries and are capable of removing 97% of fecal coliform, 100% of giardia cysts, 99.98% cryptosporidium oocysts, 100% of worms, 100% of parasites, and up to 90% of organic and inorganic toxicants from contaminated water.

The bio-sand filter has no moving parts, requires no external power or sunlight, can be simply constructed in-country using locally available materials, and has centuries of proven results. For less than $100 the bio-sand filter provides a lifetime of clean drinking water for a household. Pure Water For The World provides jobs. They provide better lives. They provide something so basic yet so important to the lives and health of those in need. Most importantly they provide hope.

To learn more about the global water crisis, visit purewaterfortheworld.org