In this instructable, I will be discussing a global issue that not many people seem to know about and explaining what we can do to fix it. Watch the video above to here about the clean water crisis or keep reading below.

Step 1: The Problem

Roughly 748 million people in the world lack access to clean drinking water. These individuals have to walk long distances only to collect dirty drinking water from contaminated ponds and rivers that will likely make them sick. As a result, Over 840,000 people die every year from diseases caused by dirty drinking water and poor sanitation. Most of these individuals are children under the age of 5 who have not yet built up a strong enough immune system to fight off the diseases. The water crisis affects so many aspects of life that it creates a poverty trap, making it very difficult for development to take place in areas that do not have clean water. Women and girls are responsible for walking miles every day to collect the drinking water. This takes girls out of the classroom and women out of the workforce. The water then causes a high rate of illness for everyone who drinks it, keeping more children out of the classroom and more adults out of the workforce. This issue costs time, health, education, productivity, and sometimes life itself.

Step 2: The Solution

The remarkable thing to me is just how easy of a problem this is to fix. For many of these areas, all it would take to provide clean water is just drilling a water well. For many of these people, the answer to their biggest problem is right underneath them. The first time I heard about the need for clean water was from a video that came out about ten years ago. The video explained that the estimated cost at that time to solve the world water crisis altogether was $20 billion a year. Initially, that sounds like a pretty daunting number. But then they went on to say that the amount of money that America alone spends on Christmas every year was $450 billion. That means if America spent just 5% less on Christmas and gave that money toward providing clean water, the clean water crisis wouldn’t exist. Now Christmas isn’t the only time of the year where we spend a little too much so it’s easy to see how this issue could be solved if enough people decided to get involved. I really think that as far as world issues go this has got to be one of the easiest ones to solve if not the easiest. It has a relatively simple solution that comes at a relatively cheap price tag. It’s only a matter of people being willing to step in and do something about it.

Step 3: The Organization

So this is the part where I ask you to get involved. We have over 840,000 people dying every year from diseases we actually know how to prevent. There are several organizations you can get involved with to change this, but the organization I am going to tell you about today is called The Last Well. This is a Christian nonprofit organization that is attempting to provide clean water to the entire nation of Liberia by the end of 2020. They chose Liberia because it was consistently ranking as one of the poorest countries in the world as well as one of the most miserable countries in the world. I feel comfortable recommending this organization to others because not only have I trusted my own donations with them for years, but I also interned with them a couple of summers ago and saw the work they were doing. I think it will be very interesting to see the development that takes place in Liberia after they are no longer stuck in the poverty trap caused by dirty drinking water.

Step 4: Donate

Visit https://fundraise.thelastwell.org/give/44481/#!/do... to donate to the cause today. $20 provides one child with clean water. $3,000 provides an entire village with clean water. Any amount can make a difference.

Step 5: Raise Awareness

Share my video at the top with your friends to let other people know about the need for clean water. If enough people get involved, we can make this problem disappear completely.

Step 6: Fundraise

Visit https://thelastwell.org/get-involved/ to learn about setting up your own fundraising page for clean water. You can customize the page to explain why you would like to raise money for clean water and how much money you would like to raise. You can attach your own video to the page to really personalize it. Then you can share your fundraising page with your family, friends, and social media to see just how big of an impact you can have. I have started fundraising pages before around my birthday and around Christmas to get people to donate to my page in lieu of gifts. You can do a fundraiser anytime of year though and attach it to any event or activity, like running a marathon for donations or shaving your head if you reach a certain amount of money. Get creative with it.