Charity:Water/Water For Christmas

I am a "lurker" on Kelly's Korner Blog who each Friday has a "Show Us Your Life Friday" where there is a different topic. This week was "show us your favorite charities" week. I couldn't pass up this opportunity to spread the word about water.
Click the link below for more info...

Water For Christmas

The lack of access to clean water is the leading cause of death in underdeveloped countries.
Try to imagine walking on a three hour journey…twice a day…to collect a liquid which shares “two diabolical identities–life mixed with death. It is both cure and poison.”(Dan Haseltine)
Inside the containers of millions of people around the world is a mixture of “water, dirt, algae, cow and goat feces, bacteria, mosquito larvae and other insect eggs and parasites and various waterborne diseases waiting for a host.” (Haseltine)

They are forced every day to make the choice…drink and die.
Or don’t drink and die.
And die they do.
4500 children die EVERY day due to water related diseases.
Did you get that?
4500 children every day.
And the solution lies simply below the surface…in a relatively inexpensive and permanent solution.

* According to charitywater.org:- One in six people on the planet do not have access to safe, clean drinking water.- Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all sickness and disease, and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Many people in the developing world, usually women and children, walk more than three hours every day to fetch water that is likely to make them sick. Those hours are crucial, preventing many from working or attending school. Additionally, collecting water puts them at greater risk of sexual harassment and assault. Children are especially vulnerable to the consequences of unsafe water. Of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation, 90% are children under 5 years old. Honestly, I did NOT know all this a few months ago. I did know that clean, safe drinking water was not accessible to many, but I was unaware of these specific statistics.

Then it was these statistics that sealed the deal—
Americans spend 450 billion dollars on Christmas every year.
It would cost 10 billion dollars to give the whole world clean water.
Are you kidding me?
Unacceptable.

We are partnering with Charity Water. You can visit their website and read more about them at http://www.charitywater.org/. We fund the wells and 100% of our donations go DIRECTLY to building wells in Liberia, Africa. And we are EXCITED about this. As our money comes in and we raise enough to start building, they will give us GPS coordinates plotted in GoogleEarth to show us exactly where the wells will be built. We can watch videos and see photos of our wells being built and check in anytime. Amazing, right?!? It cost $5,000 to build one well. But, well, our goal is 10 BILLION!