It all starts with clean water

Health, education, and prosperity. They are all made possible with clean water. Yet 1 in 10 people globally still don’t have clean water close to home.

Imagine if you had to walk three hours each day to collect water for cooking, cleaning and drinking.

Now imagine the only water available could make you and your loved ones sick.

And if you needed to go to hospital - the doctors and nurses treating you were unable to wash their hands properly. Because there isn’t any running water.

We are here to change this.

Bintu Nasiru and her children walk back home after collecting water from the stream in Nigeria. WaterAid/ Etinosa Yvonne

WaterAid/Tariq Hawari

800

children a day die from diarrhoea caused by dirty water and poor sanitation- that’s one every two minutes.

WaterAid/ Etinosa Yvonne

1 in 10

or 703 million people do not have clean water close to home.

WaterAid/ Ranita Roy

1 in 5

or almost 1.7 billion do not have a decent toilet.

WaterAid works in 33 countries globally.

Papua New Guinea:

4.7 million people don't have access to clean water - that's 6 in every 10 people.

Ethiopia:

Almost 50% of the country’s 112 million people don’t have clean water. A child dies every hour from the resulting diseases.

Colombia

1.3 million people do not have clean water close to home.

2 billion people do not have a water source that can withstand the impacts of climate change.

Ouch Lim (75), Cambodia collecting water WaterAid/Tariq Hawari

Lim's story

75 year-old Ouch Lim lives in a rural community in Cambodia. She is the main caregiver for her great-granddaughter, baby Sreynich.

Recent droughts have left the local wells dry. Now Lim has no choice but to collect contaminated water from a nearby pond.

It’s the only water she and the baby have for drinking, cooking and cleaning.

Ouch Lim, 74, feeds her great-grandaughter Sreynich in Cambodia. WaterAid/Tariq Hawari

Ouch Lim, 74, feeds her great-grandaughter Sreynich in Cambodia. WaterAid/Tariq Hawari

´ I feel sad to drink the water…I think that viruses come from the plastic bags in the water'
Ouch Lim, Cambodia

Ouch Lim, 74, collects milky pond water in Cambodia. WaterAid/Tariq Hawari

With your support, we can install deeper wells in communities like Lim’s to reach the clean groundwater below. That way - no one will have to drink milky pond water polluted with plastic bags.

How do we work?

When you join the WaterAid community, you are helping to create lasting, sustainable change, not short-term fixes.

· We work with low-cost and locally sourced tools and technology

· We help communities to adapt to the impact of climate change- for example through drought and flood-resistant water systems

· We work in partnership with local communities, organisations, and decision-makers

· We share our knowledge and expertise to scale up and reach even more people.

This diagram shows a gravity flow water system typical of the systems our partners construct in our program countries.

Since 1981 we have focused on three essential things: clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene….

WaterAid/ James Kiyimba

Together with supporters like you and our partners, we have reached over 28 million people with clean water.

WaterAid/ Frehiwot Gebrewold

But we still need your help so that everyone, everywhere can have access to clean water close to home.

WaterAid/ Behailu Shiferaw