By ALEXIS MARTINEZ
Every 15 seconds a child dies of water born diseases.
In Ethiopia, clean water is not provided and women and children use dirty water for household needs. Most of the water available has been exposed to disease and unhealthy bacteria such as diarrheal disease and pathogenic microorganisms.
Women and children walk up to five miles a day to carry water back to their families. They spend their time carrying dirty water rather than learning to read or write.
“[I was] talking to one of the chiefs and he said he didn’t know clean drinking water existed,” junior Merrie Harding said.
This is not uncommon in Ethiopia as Harding learned from her summer visits. She has seen what citizens go through and her father is the CEO of Water Is Life so she wanted to do something on campus to help the problem.
She brought her idea to campaign for a well to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and three other students volunteered to help her spread the word. One of their main goals is to raise awareness of the water crisis in the world.
“We want to emphasize that people don’t have the ability to turn on a faucet,” Harding said. “[Dirty water] is all they know.”
Harding is working on campus and the community, involving sponsors such as Publix, to raise $2500 to build one well, which would provide a whole community, 500 people, access to clean drinking water. The well would be built in the middle of the community so as many people as possible have access to it.
“It’s a good, worthy cause. All the money we could get goes to Water Is Life and drilling a well; nothing else,” Harding said.
FCA is selling t-shirts for $20 and re-usable water bottles for $15 during both lunches in front of the Trading Post. They are openly taking donations at school and trying to raise awareness of the water crisis as a whole. Senior Spencer Cotton got involved with this project because it’s for a good cause.
“I think access to clean water should be a right to every one,” Cotton said. “It’s not just about providing clean water but the opportunities water provides: mainly education and greater health.”
//