Why Clean Water Must Include “WASH”
Providing communities with clean, safe water is only a part of the process. In order to ensure a community’s water source remains safe and people are healthy, there needs to be sanitation solutions. This includes access to toilets and the ability to properly wash hands.
When Lifewater International designs water solutions for remote villages, we follow the WHO’s international guidelines that state a village’s water source must be within 1 km from homes and have a 30 minute waiting time or less. If travel is involved, it must be doable for every community member, from the very young to the elderly and disabled. In schools the water must be on the school grounds.
Lifewater also follows the United Nations’ Water Access, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) initiative, which virtually eliminates waterborne disease. It states the three goals of water access, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) all play a foundational role in improving life for the rural poor and must be implemented together to be successful. While clean, safe water improves health and enables people to prosper; it also requires hygiene and sanitation practices to be sustainable. Lacking WASH’s critical healthy habits, a community’s new water source will likely become contaminated, thereby subjecting families to the same hardships they experienced before they had safe water.
To ensure lasting transformation, every Lifewater project includes our staff working together with local community health promoters to share the importance of our Healthy Homes program and the way it allows villagers to take charge of their health. Part of the program includes teaching people how hand washing stops the spread of disease as well as showing them how to construct simple devices to properly wash.
Under WASH, the village learns the danger of openly using the toilet and how the practice is directly linked to increased illness and even death among the community. The UN states 12% of the world’s population still practices open defecation, and at least 2 billion people still drink from a water source contaminated with feces, which can contain dangerous pathogens that make people sick.
While waterborne disease is the second leading cause of death in children under five, once people get access to safe water and learn how to improve health; waterborne illness is virtually eradicated. Families spend less money on medical care, have more time to invest in their futures, and their children spend more time getting educated.
We know safe water is critical but maintaining that water point and taking ownership of it for generations is how the solution of the water crisis becomes a reality. Lifewater believes water, sanitation, and hygiene practices all serve to help communities realize greater health and a more complete understanding of their God-given dignity and the ability to thrive. Join us in helping to eradicate waterborne diseases and save lives. Please make a one-time donation or become a monthly donor.
