The Importance of Clean Water

I recently received a piece of mail from an organization called "Food for the Hungry." I figured their newsletter might talk about refugee camps and food distributions and would ask for money to feed a certain number of people. I was surprised to learn that their efforts were centered on providing clean water. The newsletter explained not only how a permanent, clean water supply was essential to food supply, but how it was essential to any improvement in people’s lives.

To understand this, first of all, I have to say that watching "Survivor" is not a total waste of time in this regard. Watching the survivors’ struggles to obtain water and purify it for use is a very good way to understand the reality of this in peoples’ lives.

Food for the Hungry lists five reasons why easy access to clean water is essential for peoples’ lives to improve and for them to pull themselves out of poverty and misery. First of all, unclean water causes disease such as dysentery, diarrhea, and typhoid. Many people, especially children, die of these diseases, especially since people without a clean water supply often have no access to health care. Thus, many people die from the diseases caused by unclean water before they can even have a chance to improve their lives.

Secondly—and this was something I had never even thought about—children often drop out of school and receive little or no education because they must spend most of their time hauling clean water many miles to their homes! This also affects the food supply because people are either sick from drinking unclean water or are too busy hauling clean water back to their homes to work in the fields, produce food for themselves, or food they could sell in the marketplace. Additionally, their animals often get sick and die from sharing the same unclean water source with the people, compounding the food situation!

Food for the Hungry is a Christian organization, and so they naturally care about saving these peoples’ souls. Polluted water, they point out, often causes people to believe in evil spirits and resort to religions dedicated to appeasing these evil spirits. They are therefore not open to Christianity. Whether or not you agree with this, it definitely is not desirable for people to live lives of ignorance in which they do not have time for an education and are reduced to fearful lives of superstition.