Water Day!

Hey everyone, March 22 is World Water Day!

Boston received a nice present in honor of the occasion in the form of a snowy rainy mix on March 21, but in my ungrateful way I initially complained about the inconvenience of it. Now that I'm in a warm dry apartment, I realize its wonderful to live where there's frequent rain and plenty of fresh water.

I rarely remember that water insecurity is a real problem for lots of people throughout the world. The UN Global Issues water page states, "According to the Millennium Development Goals Report 2012, 783 million people, or 11 per cent of the global population, remain without access to an improved source of drinking water. Such sources include household connections, public standpipes, boreholes, protected dug wells, protected springs and rainwater collections....Furthermore, there are regions particularly delayed such as Sub-Saharan Africa where over 40 per cent of all people without improved drinking water live."

No one can live without water! Those 11% without improved water aren't super-humans who can live without drinking, or fend off waterborne pathogens with immune systems of steel. Instead, people with insufficient access to clean water get sick a lot. How can anyone reach their full potential as a human being when they have cholera or dysentery?

There are lots of great organizations working to bring down that 11%, though. One that I'm a bit familiar with is blood:water mission which I love because they work on both water sources and the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Maybe in honor of World Water Day, all of us whose lives are gushing with clean water can give a little to help others gain access to this basic human need.