charity:water

It’s so simple that it’s easy to ignore.

Water.

My kids pour it on the ground from their Sigg bottles.

They flop it across their face after a soccer game.

The turn on the hose in the driveway to make streams for their match box cars.

It flows down our drains and we leave it running to soak our filthy dishes.

Last year I was able to team up with thirty other bloggers to raise money for an organization called charity:water.

This October charity:water is launching a campaign to raise enough money to construct a well drilling rig in Ethiopia.

80 wells can be dug in one year with a rig.

Which equals 40,000 people in one year.

Forty. Thousand. People.

Those kinds of numbers just do not register with me, honestly.

So I like to think of smaller numbers to motivate me, to speak to me.

And then I break it on down to individual faces.

Like the faces of my own children.

The six faces that look at me around the breakfast table.

The six faces that want to be tucked in, hugged, taught, carried, driven.

40,000 people in one year.

That’s 5,000 families just like ours.

Which is an enormous number of families.

I don’t even know 5,000 families.

And I cannot even imagine 5,000 families who have to drink dirty water.

That’s over 5,000 little Ottos and Moselys and Rileys and Hawkeyes and Londons and Willows.

That’s way too many mothers who have to watch their thirsty children reach out for contaminated water.

That’s way too many fathers who cannot offer their sons a cold drink of clear water.

Babies that can’t be bathed and hands that are never really clean.

Please head over to charity:water today.