We take safe water for granted. However, for nearly a quarter of the world’s population, every drop of water they use for drinking, cooking, or cleaning brings the risk of disease. Many of these diseases can be debilitating or even fatal; typhoid, cholera, and dysentery, along with other diarrhoeal diseases, claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every year in communities that rely on contaminated water – especially young children. Diarrhoeal diseases are the second leading cause of death in children under five; around 1.5 billion children suffer from diarrhoeal diseases every year and more than 500,000 will die from it.

Safe water can change everything for a community. While contaminated water spreads disease, safe water can be one of our greatest protectors against it. Not only can a water filter or a borehole protect families from drinking or cooking with contaminated water, but having abundant water in the community allows people to practice vital protective hygiene. Safe water means that doctors and nurses can keep their workspaces clean and mothers can bathe their children without worrying about them getting sick. Everyone in the community benefits when people can fight the spread of disease.

However, for many communities in the developing world, help isn’t always reliable. While charities have implemented hundreds of safe water systems in developing communities in recent years, more than half of those systems last less than a decade before failing.

H2O4ALL was created with an understanding of how precious – and how fragile – safe water access is. In each project, we work alongside local leaders to understand the most impactful way to serve each community. We strive to empower our partner communities by educating community members on water safety, hygiene, and system maintenance at the end of each project. Finally, we keep in touch with our client communities after the end of the project to ensure that their new water systems continue to run smoothly.

Thanks to this approach of community empowerment and strong relationships, our water systems have stood the test of time. Over the past seventeen years, we’ve empowered more than 100 communities in Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Haiti, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and Zambia with the help of our volunteers and our ground partners. Hospitals, schools, community centres, and orphanages have received safe water systems, providing not only fresh, clean safe water but also an opportunity to empower their communities. With each day our client communities enjoy access to safe, clean and reliable water, without the threat of waterborne diseases, lives are saved.

This year alone, communities in Kenya, the Dominican Republic, Liberia, and Uganda have felt the impact of H2O4ALL’s water systems. Most recently, our friends at Church 365 traveled to Liberia to distribute water filters to a group of mothers and disabled children.

And yet, we’re not finished. This fall, we’re returning to Uganda to implement a safe water system at Mukono Hospital, which will empower the hospital to provide thousands of Mukono residents with safer medical care and protection from waterborne diseases. We’ll also return to Villa Clara, Cuba to bring safe water to two more churches in need – continuing a project that has touched thousands of lives in the Cienfuegos and Villa Clara Districts since its beginning in 2015.

We’re confident, as we finish our seventeenth year of fighting for worldwide safe water access, that we can continue to make lasting change for those who need it most. If you’ve been with us on this journey, whether you’ve volunteered, donated, or benefited from an H2O4ALL initiative, we can’t thank you enough.