If I were to ask the average person on the street right now, “what is the deadliest thing facing many human beings today” the answers would be endless. Some may say disease, war, George Zimmerman, etc.
If I were to ask the average person on the street right now, “what is the deadliest thing facing many human beings today” the answers would be endless. Some may say disease, war, George Zimmerman, etc.
Yet more often than not, the thought of that answer being water would rarely cross people’s minds. However, it’s true.
Water is one of life’s most basic needs. In the United States, we see water as something that we have always, and probably always will, have.
The thought that water covers 70 percent of the planet, yet an incredible number of people die from thirst everyday is mind boggling to most of us.
Since elementary school we’ve all heard people complain about drinking water out of water fountains because they think that water is “nasty” or “dirty.” However, try taking your complaints to areas such as Africa, Latin America, and South East Asia where the nearest clean water supply is more than likely miles away.
Many people spend nearly three hours a day traveling to the nearest water supply, which is normally contaminated with and exposed to an incredible amounts of disease, bacteria, and germs. Because of this, nearly one billion people live without clean water.
And the problem doesn’t just stop with water. Water affects everything.
Let’s look at one problem a society could face without clean water. No water means no restrooms. No restrooms mean the formation of extremely high levels of germs. High levels of germs naturally causes sickness. Sickness leads to a lack of production for that society because attendance at work and schools steadily decreases. Sickness also causes a bigger issue, which is death. And how often does this occur? Well research shows that about every 19 seconds, a mother in this world loses a child due to a water related sickness.
Perhaps this will never affect you, your loved ones, or anyone you may know personally. However, does that make it okay for us to sit back and do nothing while a billion people suffer from something that can easily be fixed?
There are organizations such as charity:water, Blue Legacy, Wine to Water, CannedWater4Kids, Lifesaver bottle, and many more that have dedicated themselves to reversing the water crisis. At A&T, we lead the country in graduating black engineers.
With the knowledge this group of people have gained, think of the many lives alone could save if A&T actually funded for these students to travel to one of these countries and help form a new way to bring clean water to a village. With many charities willing to support this, as well other organizations with connections to these villages, imagine the impact an A&T clean water project could bring to a society.
A water project can help people save time on travels to get water. This time saved can help increase the attendance in local schools, and thus increase global literacy in countries where 50 percent or less of the citizens can read and write.
A proper education cannot only help a society grow; it can open up doors for our entire world that was once closed. Clean water in Africa alone could open up 40 billion hours (the collective time spent by most Africans collecting water) of time spent doing other things such as reading, researching, and exploring.
Clean water also means less disease. This means the world economy can spend far less money on medicine and spend more on books, buildings, and structures designed to help build society.
In a campaign I started on my birthday, I found out that just $20 could help provide clean water to one person in his or her village for 20 years.
We’ve always heard there is no solution to saving the world. However, by spending $20, the same amount of money many of us spent on Nxlevel’s white party ticket alone, you could help bring life back into a society that is suffering simply because it is denied access to life’s most basic need: water.
No one solution can fix the problem. However, by educating yourself about this crisis, we can all help to one day end this crisis.
For more information on this topic, feel free to research any of the listed organizations, or visit www.mycharitywater.org/empoweringgloballiteracy.
[email protected] and follow him on Twitter @TrumaineWasHere
- Trumaine McCaskill, Opinion Editor