Millions of women and children spend hours every day walking miles to collect water.
The issue
What is the problem?
The sanitation and water crisis affects billions of people globally, and results in the deaths of 4,000 children every single day. End Water Poverty works to change this, but needs your help too.
The facts: Currently, a staggering 2.6 billion people live without a safe toilet and 884 million people lack access to clean water. These problems combine to make a massive crisis for developing countries - undermining health, education, economic and gender equality progress.
Affecting health
Affecting children
Sadly, children suffer heavily from this crisis. 4000 die from preventable water related diseases every day making it the biggest killer of young children, killing more than HIV/AIDS, malaria and measles combined every day.
But if we can make progress - the rewards are immense. More children will have time to attend school, instead of walking for hours each week for water, or unable to attend classes because of a lack of private toilets.
Affecting developing economies
The crisis drastically affects developing economies too - in Africa, an estimated 5% of GDP is lost to illnesses and deaths caused by dirty water and the absence of sanitation.
Again, the rewards of progress are impressive. For every £1 invested in sanitation, a return of £9 is made to the economy in increased work.
End Water Poverty's role
Governments are not taking enough action to halt the crisis. We demand that governments provide sanitation and water for the world's poorest people. We call for:
- One global action plan monitored by one global task force
- 70% of aid money for sanitation and water to be targeted at the poorest countries
- Water resources to be protected and shared equitably
Take a look at the campaign we organised for World Water Day 2011, The World Walks for Water, and find out more about how we make change happen including finding out about the new Sanitation and Water for All initiative.
Find out more
Read up and educate yourself on the sanitation and water crisis. There are several interesting resources online that we can recommend to you.
End Water Poverty needs people all over the world to take action with us now and help to halt a needless crisis. By pressuring our governments to provide sanitation and water for all, we can save millions of lives.