Convenient access to safe water

If we want to end poverty and have an impact on gender equity, we must reduce the amount of time spent by women and children collecting water. Women and girls in poor countries walk up to 5 hours a day carrying home heavy containers of water for their families. This prevents them from taking part in economic and development opportunities that move their communities forward, such as starting a small business. It also prevents millions of girls from going to school, thus perpetuating a cycle of illiteracy among women. The lack of education has an impact on the population and economy of a country as a whole: the countries with the least educated people are the poorest.

Unlike the average person in the United States, who is trying to reduce their water usage, our beneficiaries need to use more water in order to be healthy.

Water is the foundation of good hygiene. The goal of our projects is to improve both the quality and the quantity of water used by our beneficiaries in order to prevent the spread of disease.

Each person needs about 10 gallons of water per day for drinking and personal hygiene practices, such as frequent hand washing, daily bathing, and washing dishes and clothes. In order to achieve that quantity, total water collection time must be no more than 15 minutes. In other words, water supplies must be made more convenient for poor people so that they have time to collect more water.

Sometimes a central water point or hand-pump in a community does not provide water at locations that will reduce water carrying time to 15 minutes or less. Therefore, in our Honduras and Ethiopia projects, a large part of our funding (as much as 70%) goes to pay for piping to carry the water from the well or spring source to house taps or multiple public taps. Piping can add significant cost, but our partner organizations are masterful at conceiving of and implementing large water supply systems that serve as many people as technically possible, often in several villages, so that all our projects provide safe water at convenient locations.