World Water Day 2013: 6 Ways to Help the Water Crisis

by Lanee Lee

Turn on the faucet and “WHOOSH!” Miraculously, clean water flows constantly at the twist of a knob for millions of people around the world. But this isn’t the case for 345 million others in Africa alone, according to Water.org. Today is World Water Day, March 22, raising awareness for the worldwide water crisis. Water will replace oil as the liquid gold resource if we don’t do something about it today.

It’s something we take for granted in first world countries. For example, the other day, my water was turned off unexpectedly for over three hours. No showers, no washing dishes, no DRINKING water. I thought it was the end of the world. But imagine dealing with this problem EVERYDAY with no easy solution in sight.

Here is the water crisis reality, provided by Water.org:

6 Ways You Can Help

On World Water Day, it’s an opportunity to make a difference by volunteering, donating, getting involved politically and spreading awareness. Here are six non-profit organizations doing their part to solve the water crisis not just on World Water Day, but everyday:

Founded by Matt Damon and Gary White, Water.org, where the stats in this piece are from, is working to end the worldwide water and sanitation crises, and provides donors live updates about the communities they’re helping. Learn more here.

Advocates are pushing Congress to pass the Water for the World Act, which would help provide clean water and sanitation to those in need. Learn more here.

Charity: water brings clean drinking water to people in developing nations through several different technologies, including hand-dug wells, drilled wells, rehabilitations and rain catchments. Learn more here.

Working in 90 countries around the world, UNICEF provides potable drinking water and sanitation to schools and communities, and places special focus on hygiene, encouraging, for example, the use of hand soap. Learn more here.

WASH Advocates aims to solve the global safe drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene crises by raising awareness and increasing the amount and effectiveness of resources. Learn more here.

Passports with a Purpose, a community of travel bloggers, raised over $100k to build 5 wells in Haiti with Water.org. The campaign has ended but they’re already gearing up for next year’s fundraiser.

Two Things We Can ALL Do

Maybe time and funds are limited. Small changes can make a big difference in solving the water crisis. One way we can all help with the water crisis is to cut down on buying plastic disposable water bottles and making a habit of using refillable water bottles. Another is to reduce meat consumption.

Did you know it requires 50 baths or 1,850 gallons of water to produce one steak?!!?

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. – Marian Wright Edelman