No more Thirst Project

A craving for something to drink, often associated with dehydration and they physical condition resulting from this need, in any of various degrees – They aalmost died of thirst.

Why Are We Fighting for No More Thirst?

Project 9

Definition of Thirst:

Not only do individuals need clean water, but entire communities need clean water, and they need more than just water. Communities need clean water that is safe to use for household cooking, washing, and sanitation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that water is considered “the most important resource for sustaining ecosystems, which provide life-supporting services for people, animals, and plants.” Here we’ll examine why clean water is needed in communities. The United States Geological Society (USGS) defines safe water as “water that will not harm you if you come in contact with it.”

Types of Thirst in Our Communities:

Our economy depends on clean water: manufacturing, farming, tourism, recreation, energy production, and other economic sectors need clean water to function and flourish. Improving water quality and availability can also help build climate resiliency, which could save the lives of millions of people in every community. Without water to sustain these needs can count as thirst.

The Reasons & Root Causes of Thirst in Our Communities:

In our rural communities our people continually face enormous challenges that contributed to unavailability of clean water:

Cost: rising water costs made it difficult for rural communities to afford clean water.
Shrinking Population: Our rural communities don’t not have the resources to address water issues.
Climate Change: Extreme heat, drought and low rainfall have impacted water supplies in our communities that lead to water deficits. Climate change have also made it harder to provide clean water, which had increased the risk of waterborne illnesses, which can be deadly, especially for children.
Inadequate Infrastructure: Lack of essential utilities like water, sanitation, and waste management has negatively impact the health and well-being of people in our communities.
Water Pollution: Open water sources became polluted from animal waste, human waste, and runoff from heavy rains. This lack of sanitation access led to water pollution, which made water unavailable for drinking and other essential uses. Our rural areas have also lack dedicated water sources, forcing communities to rely on a single source of surface water or wells that can be easily polluted.

Impacts of Thirst on our communities:

The United Nations (UN) discusses five significant reasons that safe and clean water is a vital necessity for communities to thrive physically, mentally, economically, socially, and spiritually. Those reasons include:

Sustainable Development: Communities need clean water for sustainable development. Sustainable development meets the needs of people now without depleting resources for future generations.
Socioeconomic Development: Communities need clean water for socioeconomic development. Poverty and lack of clean water go together, and a key component to eliminating poverty is having access to safe water. When water supplies are improved and sustainable, it significantly enhances a community’s economic growth and reduces poverty.
Energy and Food Production: Communities need clean water for energy and food production. Clean water, energy, and food production are intricately linked. More than 25% of global energy is used towards agriculture for food production. When communities don’t have access to clean water for energy and food production, they resort to irrigating crops with untreated wastewater, which leads to water-borne diseases.
Health and Survival: Communities need clean water for health and survival. Would it surprise you to learn that more people have died from unclean water in the past 100 years than any other cause? Should we mention what source this stat came from? Countless to say that more people get critically sick. When communities don’t have access to clean water, they are often left with no other option but to wash with and drink contaminated water directly from swamps. Unsafe water causes water-borne illnesses such as Escherichia coli-induced diarrhea, cholera, typhoid fever, giardia, Hepatitis A, and dysentery.
Physical Health: Communities need clean water to stay physically healthyand prevent diseases caused by a lack of adequate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). When crops are irrigated with water that isn’t contaminated, it leads to healthier people. Another way access to clean water helps people thrive physically in communities is by reducing the strain on the bodies of women and children who carry heavy water containers while walking for hours every day to collect water for their families. Additionally, there is a safety risk of harm from wild animals and other people when they walk great distances without protection. When there is clean water accessible within the community, it eliminates those risks. Clean water also has a physical impact on human brains, which helps communities thrive mentally.
Healthy Ecosystems: Communities need clean water for healthy ecosystems. Clean water is crucial to healthy ecosystems. A community is comprised of people (and other living organisms) who reside in the same geographical area and live interacting with one another. An ecosystem is broader, including the interaction between people and other living creatures as well as the interaction between those living components and their nonliving environments (water, weather, climate, etc.). Each part of the ecosystem is integral and necessary to promote the ecosystem’s health, productivity, and sustainability.
Thriving Mentally and Spiritually: Communities need clean water to thrive mentally and spiritually. Adequate access to clean water allows communities to thrive mentally and spiritually. Physically, clean water keeps people hydrated. Having access to clean water provides hope, hope that a living God sees them and loves them. We offer hope for a better future for children and their families.

Possible Solutions & Recommendations:

Access to clean water is certainly one of the most crucial needs for any community and left alone communities that are affected by humanitarian crisis, such as conflicts, famines, and natural disasters. There are several techniques whereby civil society organization and local community-based organizations that can supply communities with clean water. These include:

Educate communities by Raising awareness among the local communities about the risks of unsafe water sources, such as how to drink safe water, wash hands, and clean food.
Distributing water purification tools. These tools include tablets, filters, and other purification methods, to families in need. They can be utilized to treat contaminated water and make it safe to drink.
Investing in local infrastructure.
Installing water tanks. These tanks can collect and store water for use by the local population.
Utilizing innovative technologies.
Constructing water wells and boreholes. Community based organizations and NGOs can construct water wells in areas affected by an emergency. Drilling a well transforms lives far beyond just providing clean water. It allows a mother to keep her children healthy, enables a daughter to attend school instead of spending hours collecting water, and gives a son the freedom to dream of a brighter future.
Design and implement systems that fit the local context and needs. These systems can include water filters, solar disinfection, or flocculants. Other ways to purify water include boiling, reverse osmosis, water chlorination, distillation, iodine addition, and clay vessel filtration.
Train local partners in equipment maintenance and water purification operations.
Collect and store rainwater for domestic use, especially in areas with regular rainfall but limited access to clean water.
Ensure people have emergency water when disaster strikes, and water sources become contaminated.
Ensuring access to clean water sources by promoting low-cost solutions, such as chlorine tablets or plastic bottles that can be exposed to sunlight.
Champion new technologies, such as water generating devices that pull moisture from the air or portable filters that remove bacteria, parasites, and microplastics.