World Water Day 2017 #W4Water
March 22nd is the most important day of the calendar for us at drop4drop. Each year on this date we commemorate World Water Day with a huge social media campaign to raise awareness about the world water crisis. Throughout the years our campaign has grown in size, spreading our important message to more and more people. This year, with the help of a number of high-profile names – including Emma Stone, Jimmy Fallon and Naomi Campbell – we reached over half a billion people in just 24 hours! We were able to do this through our theme #W4Water. We asked our supporters to post images of themselves holding up a ‘W’ with their hands, using our hashtag to gain as much awareness as possible. March 22nd was our biggest and most impactful World Water Day yet.
As well as providing an opportunity to spread awareness, World Water Day presents us with a chance to take stock of the world water crisis – this includes thinking about the progress that we have made this year and the work that we still need to do. At drop4drop we have carried out a lot of work towards alleviating the water crisis this year. We have continued to expand our well construction across India and are now constructing much larger water tank projects in Uganda. Thanks to the generous donations of businesses and individuals we have been able to provide many thousands of people with access to a safe and reliable source of drinking water.
There is, however, a long way to go before the water crisis is solved. Last year alone, 443 million school days were lost to diseases caused by the consumption of unsafe water. These preventable diseases cause over 3 million deaths per year. The UN actually estimates that sub-Saharan Africa alone loses 40 billion hours a year in collecting water. This is time that could be spent caring for dependents, working, in education and much more. What’s more, collecting this water often involves carrying heavy containers on long and dangerous journeys – the health effects of this also have significant impacts on communities. There are still 663 million people living without access to a clean source of drinking water. Over 300 million of these are in Africa alone where drop4drop carries out much of its work.
However, we do have a set of solutions to this crisis. By working on a project-by-project basis it is possible to solve this crisis and provide #cleanwaterforall. We can only do this by raising awareness and world water day was a perfect chance to achieve this.
But it’s not over yet! Click here to get involved and help be the change you want to see in this world!