World Water Day – why water matters

Ecuador: image courtesy of Just A Drop

I’m lucky. I live in England and take it for granted that my family and I have access to clean, safe water. I turn on a tap in my house and out it gushes, ready to use: lovely, fresh water. We drink it, cook with it, shower in it and brush our teeth with it.  Our water never makes us sick.

World Water Day

But not everyone is as lucky as we are. Worldwide, more than 768 million people – around 40% of the global population – have no access to clean, safe water. To mark World Water Day on March 22nd the international water aid charity Just A Drop has invited five bloggers to write about ‘why water matters’.

#watermatters

The water filter bottle company H2WOW will make a donation to Just A Drop for every share, like, tweet and comment of this and the other blog posts involved in the #watermatters campaign so please do support us both here and on social media.

Water in Sicily

The only time I ever consider our water supply is when we visit our relatives in Sicily and I worry about the water running out. Our relatives only have mains water for a couple of hours every few days and they never know when it’s coming. They all have extra water tanks at the top of their houses to store as much water as possible when it does come. When the water is turned on a cry goes up from house to house, whatever the time, and everyone rushes to switch on their motorised water pumps and fill their tanks.

Our relatives seem very accepting of this situation. The older members of the family remember walking to the nearest well for water when they were young so this is a great improvement for them. My husband remembers helping his grandparents to fill their water tank using a bucket on a rope in the 1970s before they had a motorised pump.

When my eldest child was a baby and I was a very protective new mother I was reluctant even to take her to Sicily because of the water situation. My reluctance seems ridiculous to me now because even if the water did run out we could always buy some. But I guess it was my instinct to protect my precious baby and keep her safe which made me worry.

Image courtesy of Just a Drop

Unsafe water

I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like for mothers who have no access to clean water and therefore no way of protecting their children or themselves against the deadly danger of waterborne diseases. I use the word deadly because unsafe water actually kills 4,000 children under five every day. That’s someone’s tiny, precious son or daughter dying every 20 seconds. Dying from entirely preventable illnesses like diarrhoea.

Just A Drop

When Fiona Jeffery OBE learned that just £1 could provide a child with clean, safe water for ten years she set up a charity to help – Just A Drop was founded in 1998 and to date its international water aid projects have reached around 1.5 million people in some of the poorest communities in the world.

How you can help

It’s really easy for you to help too by commenting on this post and sharing it on social media. H2WOW will make a donation to Just A Drop for every share, like, tweet and comment of this #watermatters post. If you’d also like to donate even the smallest amount then you can do so here.

This post is part of the #watermatters campaign by international water aid charity Just A Drop to raise awareness of the vital work they carry out in developing countries around the world – providing clean, safe water to those who need it most.

Tomorrow blogger and Times journalist Sarah Ebner is publishing the next #watermatters post on her Family Travel Times blog. Yesterday’s #watermatters post was by author Keris Stainton on her Della says blog.