4,500 children will die today from water-related diseases. Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren’t strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery, and other illnesses.
Ninety percent of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions are to children under five years old. Many of these diseases are preventable. The UN predicts that one tenth of the global disease burden can be prevented simply by improving water supply and sanitation.
This video is what grabbed my heart and got me involved.
This year, I will turn the page of a new decade. Sadly, it is a decade that millions of children will never reach. Instead of a big birthday bash and gifts, I created a fundraising campaign to build a well in a village that lacks clean water. To fund my well, I need to raise $5,000. That’s a big number. But not as big as the impact on a village of several hundred men, women, and children.
I chose charity: water for my campaign, because their unique model allows 100% of campaign donations to go directly to our well and sanitation system. Even better, once our campaign is closed, our project will be completed in about 12-18 months. At that point, charity: water reports the status of the well to donors and uploads photos of the project we funded to Google Earth with a GPS dot on the village where it was built. It is powerful to use this method to directly connect donors with the individuals their hard-earned dollars supported.
Event though I “gave away” my birthday for this cause, my husband insisted that I still have a birthday party. So I invited a bunch of friends to an activity/awareness/fundraiser/scavenger hunt afternoon, with all the activities centered around water. Guests were divided into teams, and played games to earn team and individual points. The highest-point-earning team received charity: water bracelets as prizes, and a drawing was held for a single grand-prize winner who received a charity: water thermos.
Here’s some fun images from our party. If you are hosting your own charity: water well campaign, feel free to steal my ideas for your fundraising party!
First off, here’s the chart of activities folks could do to earn prizes. And here’s some photos of them doing some of those activities.
Silly Activity: pose for a silly photo with the water jug (sneaky me, this also allowed me to capture photos of party guests!) In many developing countries, women and children walk for hours every day to gather water. They often use yellow diesel fuel containers called "jerry cans." The cans I found are not the same shape, but at least they are the same color!
Craft: make a collage of ways water is used using magazine clippings. Scissors! Glue! Cut! Paste! And some final results.
People You Know: Two big posters on the walls with sharpies and their own instructions. One poster said, “List 10 people you know who have received hospital or medical care.” The facts: If those people lived in a place without clean water and sanitation, eight of them would have been sick with illnesses resulting from drinking contaminated water and not having basic sanitation capabilities (such as hand washing). The other poster said, “List 4 children you know under five years old (no one attending the party, please).” If those four children lived in Sierra Leone, just an example of one country that has very little access to clean water, one of them would die before their fifth birthday from illnesses caused by contaminated water. These are heavy facts, and it is hard to look at a poster board of names of people you know, and consider the tragic deaths occurring in our world by the thousands per day.
Strength Activity: carry five-gallon containers of water around three orange cones. Earn extra points for carrying two jugs at a time, and yet even more points going barefoot (as many impoverished women and children do). The five-gallon jugs weighed about 40 lbs each! I love the facial expressions of “Oh wow, this is HEAVY!” And the races were a blast too, especially the ones where the kids carrying a 5 lb mini-jug raced an adult carrying 80 lbs of water!
Intellectual Activities: imagine you are the head of the household of a family of nine. You live on a daily ration of ten gallons of hand-carried water. Decide how you will use today’s ten gallons for the following needs: drinking, bathing, laundry, food preparation, dishes, household cleaning, and sharing with sick neighbors who aren’t well enough to walk to gather their own water. Now guess how much water is consumed by Americans for activities like showering, flushing the toilet, cleaning the house, cooking, and more. (Hint, Americans average about 160 gallons per day of direct water consumption, while half the world’s population struggles to obtain 20 gallons per day). If you include in our consumption the water used to produce and transport our cars, buildings, food, etc., our consumption is well over 1,000 gallons daily).
Food Activity: Well, I don’t know if eating food counts as an activity, but we did it anyway. Since I don't like cake, we ate popsicles instead. In an effort to conserve energy, Benjamin popped a match (not a candle) in my popsicle so everyone could sing me happy birthday! It was windy, and my expression is me trying to keep the wind from blowing out the match for me!
Overall, I think it was a success. Party guests were laughing and having fun. Several thanked me afterward for how educational it was. And we raised about ten percent of the funds needed to build our water and sanitation system! My campaign is open through April 31st, and you can donate here. Or, consider starting your own campaign!
