Quite simply, the facts are staggering.
Every year, more than 700,000 children around the world die of illnesses related to poor hygiene and lack of sanitation, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). That’s almost 2000 children every day who die because they can’t access a basic human right: clean water.
Further studies by the WHO have found that in developing countries like Ethiopia, disease from dirty water kills more people every year than all forms of violence combined. Every day, women and girls carry up to 20 litres of water – often from unsafe sources – an average of six kilometres to their villages. That’s a combination of about 40 billion hours a year. Across the globe, 1.8 billion people still do not having access to clean water, according to WHO.
One girl, 16-year-old Fikere, was a living statistic.
Every morning, from her small village in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, Fikere and her sisters would set out at dawn to tackle the three-hour round trip to fetch water for the family. A long line of villagers would be waiting at the river’s edge, queuing patiently for their turn to collect a few litres of dirty water. More often than not, Fikere would miss out on the first three classes of school, losing precious hours of a valuable education that would lead her towards her dream of becoming a pilot.
Fikere’s mother, Asmarech, wouldn’t be able to fetch water herself because she had to stay home and care for her five other children, who were regularly sick from drinking contaminated water.
Despite the hardship, Asmarech considered herself lucky because all her children were still alive. “It is very hard to watch people from your village bury their children,” she said. “I feel helpless, and I fear it is only a matter of time until it will happen to me.”
Stories like this are common in Ethiopia, with only 31% of households having access to safe drinking water, and only 18 per cent having access to sanitation facilities, according to CARE Australia.
But CARE Australia is changing this.
Working with the people most at risk, CARE Australia is saving lives by protecting water sources and constructing wells, pumps, boreholes and toilets in schools and communities. In 2013 alone, these efforts helped more than 1.5 million people develop sustainable water practices.
Asmarech and Fikere are just two of the people benefitting from CARE Australia’s initiatives, with Asmarech taking a leading role in her community as a member of her local water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) committee.
“After CARE’s help, we now have clean water, my children are no longer sick, and the frequency of illness in my village has fallen,” she says.
Fikere has also joined her school’s sanitation club, along with 80 other students. She teaches fellow students and her community how to prevent illness through improved sanitation and hygiene practices, like draining stagnant pools of water near the home to prevent malaria.
“I really like being a member of the school sanitation club because it has given me the knowledge to help protect my younger brothers and sisters from sickness,” says Fikere.
The project also means Fikere can spend more time in school instead of spending hours collecting water, and, since receiving sanitation and hygiene training, Asmarech has made a number of changes to the household to improve the family’s health, including relocating the cows and goats to a separate animal pen.
“We never had a toilet before, so my family would defecate around the house or in the nearby fields,” says Asmarech. “Today, we have a toilet and next to it is a tap with running water and soap to wash our hands. We also dispose of liquid and solid waste, like dishwashing water and food scraps, in purpose-built pits.”
One of CARE Australia’s primary fundraising activities is the annual Walk in Her Shoes campaign, where Australians are encouraged to set out on foot for 25, 50 or 100 kilometres to help raise more than $1 million so CARE Australia can continue its valuable work in some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.
When communities in developing countries can access clean water, women and girls like Asmarech and Fikere get their lives back. They have the chance to be properly educated, start businesses, improve their hygiene and sanitation, and take charge of their own futures.
That is something worth walking for.
The week-long challenge ran from 8 to 14 March 2016, but you can still register and walk in your own time between now and 24 April! Register or donate at here.