International (MNN) — Imagine walking ten miles from your home to get drinking water–not clean drinking water, but dirty drinking water since it's the only water around.
You lug the water home only to find out that it has made everyone sick. It might even lead to death.
This is the case for more than one billion people worldwide. The disease that their water
contains often leads to diarrhea, which is more deadly than HIV/AIDS and kills more people than the Nazi's did in twelve years in the same amount of time.
However, by just downsizing your latte for one day, you can save one person who otherwise would have died from a waterborne disease.
Onedollarwater.com is a Web-site powered by Living Water International and created by Paul Darilek. It presents the math and the science of providing clean water for people and the impact it would
make. It also shows how to get involved and challenges believers to give up a small thing each day which would allow them to give 30 dollars a month to provide clean drinking water.
Here's some of the math:
A single $5,000 well = clean water for 700 Latin American children for 7 years
$5,000/700/7 = $1.02 per person per year
(7 years accounts for the life of the well. However, after 7 years, the well should only
need repairs, which means the water is even cheaper after that!)
In Africa, water can be cheaper than that!
For more information and a fresh look at this issue, go here.
