Where Do You Go for Water?

West Africa is home to beautiful, incredible people, but the vast majority of them have a common challenge. They don’t have access to clean water. According to UNICEF, only 11% of the population of Sierra Leone has access to safely managed water*.  While visiting a rural community in the country with a team from Canada, World Hope International Canada CEO, Tanya Nace asked villagers, “Take us to where you get your water whenever your hand dug well goes dry.” And they did.  

Walking to Water

The team followed the villagers through the bush. It was long and arduous – and no one on the team was a actually carrying water. This path regularly takes girls and women away from school and their families to a place where the water they collect will cause sickness and disease. As they walked together, villagers openly shared their desire for nearby clean water all year round. When they arrived at an area where there was a small pool of dirty water, the villagers shared that this was the area where they wash their clothes and led the way to where they collect their “clean” water to drink and cook with.

The team removed their shoes and continued further into the bush, through the mud.

The distance and the quality of the water was startling to the Canadian learning team members. When they arrived at the place where the villagers collected drinking water, reality sunk in. The so-called clean water had algae and leaves floating on top and all kinds of debris floating in it.

Transformed Lives 

This is reality for about 2.1 billion people in our world today. People are walking long distances over dangerous paths to access water that is unsafe. Together, we can change that number. Every time a village gets a safely managed well, more families have an opportunity for healthier and safer lives.  

When clean water comes to a community, immediately babies stop dying from diarrheal diseases. Children are able to go to school because they no longer need to carry dirty water all day. Women are able to spend their time working to support their families instead of carrying dirty water.  

For those who have access to clean water at the turn of a tap, it’s easy to forget that clean water matters. Clean water is life. It makes a difference in every area of our lives and in the collective health and safety of the entire community.  

* https://data.unicef.org/topic/water-and-sanitation/drinking-water/ 

Learn more about World Hope International’s Clean Water Initatives.