For billions of people around the world, accessing clean water is not as easy as turning on your faucet.
– 2.2 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water services.
– Over 440,000 children younger than 5 years die from waterborne illnesses like diarrhea.
– 688 million people receive health care at facilities with no hygiene services at all.
The good news is our charity partners listed below are working to ensure access to clean water is a reality for everyone around the world. Their programs include drilling wells; installing pumps, pipes, and toilets; educating communities about proper hygiene and sanitation; and more.
Explore the resources below to see the impact of their work.
Feeling inspired? Be a global champion and help increase access to clean water by supporting Global Impact charities through your employee giving campaign.
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Water — each of us needs it every day to drink, bathe, and clean. But for many families around the world, accessing water isn’t as simple as turning on a faucet. On average, women and children in developing countries must walk 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) per day to collect water. Even then, it’s often unclean, leading to poor sanitation, sickness, and even death. Luckily, you and your colleagues can make a difference with World Vision. World Vision helps children worldwide by tackling causes of poverty and developing access to clean water, food, health care, education, and economic opportunity. They’re the…
Few causes unite teams as powerfully as protecting children’s fundamental rights, the heart of UNICEF USA’s mission. Every day, millions of children face life-threatening challenges that can be transformed through strategic and meaningful interventions. To support this work, UNICEF USA offers companies unique opportunities to drive global change while engaging employees in immersive, purpose-driven activities and experiences. By partnering with UNICEF USA, organizations and leaders can translate corporate social commitment into tangible impact, giving employees a direct line to support the world’s most vulnerable children – particularly those struggling to access basic necessities like clean water. From powerful awareness activities…
Access to safe water means more than just staying hydrated and clean — it’s directly intertwined with education, economic development, global health, and gender equity. On World Water Day (March 22), we celebrate the long-lasting, far-reaching impact that water access can have on a community. In Nigeria, residents saw the positive ripple effects when our charity partner Mercy Corps made updates to water facilities in the small town of Gangarasso-Sangassumi schools and beyond. The improvement in one thematic area gave a boost to others to help the community better grow and thrive. The following article was originally written by Okiemute…
Benjamin Franklin famously said, “When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water.” Those that live in the United States often do not think twice about the source of their water or whether it is safe to bathe in or drink. It is a luxury that billions of people worldwide do not know, an uncertainty that communities live with every day. Throughout the movement for clean water access is an acronym called WASH, which stands for “water, sanitation and hygiene services.” This concept is used widely by our charity partners and other government entities that focus on worldwide clean…
If you’re like me, you aren’t even close to accomplishing your new year’s resolutions yet. True, we are only one month in to 2020, so there’s still plenty of time. But, if you resolved to increase your physical fitness and make the world a better place, then boy – do I have a great idea for you! Hope for Haiti, an organization dedicating itself to improving the quality of life for Haitian people, especially children, is hosting the “Hike for Haiti Challenge” April 17-19, 2020 (if you can’t participate at that time, you can join the fun any other time…
Images
- Title: Water For People India
- Charity: Water For People
- Country: India
- Photo Credit: Water For People/India
- Title: Shadia, 13, washes her hands in front of the newly built girls’ bathroom at her school in Uganda.
- Charity: Plan International USA
- Country: Uganda
- Photo Credit: James Mbiri, ©Plan International
- Title: WASH Human Interest Image
- Charity: UNICEF USA
- Country: Egypt
- Photo Credit: © UNICEF/UNI479287/Mostafa
- Charity: World Vision
- Country: Cambodia
- Photo Credit: Sokchea Heng, Dara Chhim
- Charity: Water For People
- Country: Bolivia
- Photo Credit: Water For People
- Charity: CMMB
- Country: South Sudan
- Photo Credit: Alissa Everett/Getty Images for CMMB
- Charity: India Partners
- Country: India
- Photo Credit: India Partners
- Charity: World Vision
- Country: Zambia
- Photo Credit: Christabel Mundike
- Charity: Church World Service
- Country: Timor Leste
- Photo Credit: CWS
Videos
Success Stories
UNICEF and the Baxter International Foundation are improving access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services in homes, schools and health care centers in five water-challenged regions across Egypt: Assiut, Aswan, Luxor, Minya and Qena. Ahlam Ayat is grateful that she now has a connection to safe, clean water in her house in Assuit, Upper Egypt. It used to be very difficult for her to fetch water for her family. “When there was no water, my children and most of the children of the neighborhood helped their mothers to fetch water in the vicinity. Thankfully, we now have water in our house, and we finally feel safe,” Ayat said. “Now I don’t have to worry about saving water for the household or even if the water we got from outside is contaminated or clean.” Many families like Ayat’s face a daily challenge: where to get clean, safe drinking water….
Arsenic and excessive salt from rising sea levels poisoned Julia’s young family with every sip of water they took. The pond near the rural village where Julia, her husband and their two children live in Bangladesh is their primary source of water. But it was contaminated by the poisonous carcinogen arsenic and so high in salinity, the entire family was at risk of hypertension and high blood pressure. But Julia only had two choices: Either collect the pond water she knew was making her family sick or travel miles from her village to pump drinking water from a distant well, which caused incredible hardship. If she chose to go to the well, Julia had to carry heavy jars that were difficult to lift and caused her long-term physical pain. She also had to walk miles to and from the well, which could take all day, instead of caring for her…
Meet Lennie, a passionate young woman whose journey with Water For People began in 2015, when she was only 11 years old. That was the year Water For People partnered with Lennie’s school, Chilomoni Primary, and built bathrooms, handwashing facilities, and menstrual hygiene management units to support students’ sanitation and hygiene needs. Soon a Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene club emerged to promote sanitation and hygiene among students. Lennie volunteered to be a leader in the club. “Sanitation is important because it makes our class look beautiful,” says Lennie during an interview with Water For People. She adds: “It helps us students be hygienic, so we won’t get diseases like diarrhea or cholera. These diseases can kill, they can make someone be absent from school and fail exams.” Lennie took a special interest in promoting these practices among her female classmates. “I’ve always wanted to help people,” explains Lennie in 2024,…
A farmer in Pakistan, Ghulam cares for his 12 family members on the little money he makes due to the poor farming conditions in his village. The sandy soils have restricted the farmland’s capacity for natural production because it does not retain water well. Ghulam was selected to have a water storage facility built on his farmland to help irrigate and drain the land through IRUSA’s Action for Drought Adaptive Practices and Transformation (ADAPT) project. This will prevent water wastage and have an immense effect on crop production. Thanks to your generous donations, Ghulam says that IRUSA has allowed “a new phase of life.”
When Living Water visited the Karachuonyo community, they interviewed community members to hear about their experience with the water crisis. Each person detailed how intertwined their poverty was with the lack of safe water. One resident said, “Every time the hand pump broke down, it took several weeks to repair it. This was always the most difficult time for everyone in our community. When we couldn’t walk to a neighboring community, we had no choice but to buy water from a roving tanker truck. It costs a lot of money to purchase a single jerrycan. This would leave us with little to no money for other important needs like food. The introduction of the water kiosk not only alleviated the physical burden of gathering water from a faraway source but also unlocked new opportunities for Jane and her neighbors. Jane now manages the water kiosk alongside her thriving fish mongering…
The pond near the rural village where Julia, her husband and their two children live in Bangladesh is their primary source of water. But it was contaminated by the poisonous carcinogen arsenic and so high in salinity, the entire family was at risk of hypertension and high blood pressure.
