The Need
Water is one of the world's most important natural resources. However, 80 countries experience serious water shortages. Children's tiny bodies are dependent on clean water and susceptible to waterborne disease and parasites.
When clean water is scarce, all aspects of life are impacted:
Health: Contaminated water and poor sanitation are factors in 80 percent of all disease in the developing world.
Food production: Without safe water, crops and livestock die and healthy meals cannot be prepared.
Economics: Poor health from unclean water means the productivity of the community suffers and family incomes dwindle.
Education: Where water is scarce, it is unlikely that schools will even be built or teachers will move to the communities. And because children spend time fetching water, they cannot attend school.
Fast Facts
Every 15 seconds, a child dies from a water-related illness.
More than 2.7 billion people have inadequate or nonexistent access to proper sanitation.
When a community gains access to clean water, its child mortality rate drops by half.
World Vision’s Response
No other humanitarian intervention produces a more dramatic effect on life than access to clean water and sanitation. It is foundational to all aspects of development, and often the first work World Vision does in a community.
Provision
Wells | In many regions, women and girls walk for hours every day to collect water that often isn’t even clean. In partnership with other organizations, World Vision has plans to drill 825 deep wells in rural West Africa that will bring the gift of health and clean water to nearly 500,000 people
over a six-year period.
Water-storage containers | During the rainy seasons in arid regions, World Vision helps communities collect, purify, and store fresh rainwater in safe containers for use later in the year.
Water-piping systems | We help transform arid land into fertile fields through the construction of gravity-fed clean water systems. In southern Ethiopia, for example, formerly unproductive land is now bursting with food thanks to a system like this that benefits almost 64,000 farmers.
Purification
Protection of natural springs | World Vision helps communities protect natural springs from contamination by livestock and wild animals.
Purification of water | World Vision supplies equipment to treat and purify water contaminated by bacteria, pesticides, animal waste, and waterborne disease carriers.
Sanitation
Latrine construction | Because good sanitation helps keep water sources cleaner, World Vision provides waste product management to increase health and decrease disease.
Laundry pad construction | World Vision builds concrete laundry pads to protect water sources such as wells from contamination by detergents and waste water.
Through the support of partners like you, our water projects have given more than 10 million people access to clean water and improved sanitation.
Matane's Story
Matane has lived through a succession of devastating droughts in her region of Humbo, Ethiopia — including the one that killed her cattle and her husband. But thanks to World Vision, Matane and her four children finally have clean water.
"Before we got this clean water, every member of my family was sick," says Matane. "Now we are healthy."
I am short of words to express what I felt when we got this water. I would like to say to the God of Israel, bless those people who gave us this water."
"The poor and needy search for water, but there is none; their tongues are parched with thirst, but I the LORD will answer them."
— Isaiah 41:17-18 (NIV)
Matane's Story 
