As I was taking a shower this morning it occurred to me what was spiraling down the drain. Water. Clean water. I could drink the water coming out of the shower faucet if I wanted to and I would be fine. More than fine—refreshed. And it dawned on me that it’s a privilege to have clean water as an abundant resource.
More than a billion people in the world have no access to clean drinking water. Most of their water comes from dried riverbeds and even puddles. And, oftentimes they have to walk several miles just to reach the tainted water. That’s crazy.
What’s even crazier though is that machines have actually been invented that purify water with surprisingly little energy needed, and fairly quickly. But there’s not very much money in providing clean water to developing countries. So, as of yet the technology project hasn’t picked up enough funding. Or course, I could be mistaken about all that. I saw it on the Discovery Channel, but can’t recall the name of the project.
So, for now, drilling wells is about as good as it gets. It costs about $5,000 to dig a well, which provides clean water to an entire village.
Reading over their website, I think that The Water Project may be the best place to donate money to provide clean water to folks overseas (although Water:Charity would be a cooler, though not necessarily better, option). TWP connects givers to various projects already, or soon to be, in progress. When filling out the donation, they give you the option to designate where your money is going. It even gives you the option to designate that all of your money be used for the actual building process. In other words, none of it turning around for various organization operating costs.
Being that water, just after air, is possibly the most taken-for-granted thing we have, and knowing that so many people don’t have it, I think TWP may be an really excellent way of giving some of our abundance to solve a really serious problem. I’m planning to give. You should think about it too.
