Everyone Needs Safe Water

Save Lives at Home, at School, and in Times of Crisis

What if the very thing you needed to live made you terribly sick, or worse? What would you do if the water you drank caused crippling fever, chills, fatigue, diarrhea, and pain?

What if you had no choice?

For children and families around the world, the daily struggle for clean water is a matter of life and death. In the southern Philippines, drinking disease-ridden water hurts tens of thousands of children each year—especially in rural areas.

The impact is staggering. Already-limited incomes are stretched to a breaking point because ill parents can’t work or grow food. Sick kids are chronically in and out of class—robbed of education. In the worst-case scenarios, water, sanitation, and hygiene-related illnesses take the lives of the most vulnerable—usually children under five. It happens about twice every minute.

But this can change.

When you give the gift of safe water, you send a tangible expression of God’s love and provision to a child like Joshua.*

“Finally, We Have Clean and Safe Water”

Joshua and his Grade 5 friends know what causes the stomach pain that keeps them home from school. In Joshua’s words: “dirty water” and “dirty food.”

Many rural families in the southern Philippines have no choice but to drink, cook, wash, and clean with contaminated water. And it harms more than their health; it hurts parents’ ability to work and children’s capacity to learn. But earnings and education are key to overcoming poverty. Therefore the dirty water that kids like Joshua consume often steals their future potential.

Thankfully, the opposite is also true.

Life Changes in a Wonderful Way

When families who have been struggling for years finally have clean water in their community, life changes in a wonderful way. That’s what happened for young Joshua.

A towering BioSand Water Filter was constructed at his school, along with handwashing stations. It can meet the daily safe water needs of more than 300 staff and students. It also serves hundreds of villagers who live in the area.

A Samaritan’s Purse staff member tests the water of a newly constructed school BioSand Water Filter.

“We are so glad that, finally, we have clean and safe water,” Joshua said. “We will not experience any more waterborne diseases.”

That’s something 11-year-olds like him shouldn’t have on their minds anyway. And many other students across the Philippines are experiencing the same relief. “Our heartfelt thanks for answering our prayers,” Mr. Ramos,* Joshua’s school principal, wrote in a letter (Read his letter). “You were indeed God’s instrument in making someone else’s dreams realized.”

Everyone Needs Safe Water

Safe water is a basic need that we all deserve to have met. Everyone needs safe water. But for millions of men, women, and children around the world, it’s more like a dream.

Will you make this dream of lifesaving safe water a reality for another family, school, or student?

God works through your prayers and gifts of safe water to not only save lives, He opens doors to share “living water” (John 4:10) through the Good News of His Son, Jesus Christ.

*Name changed to protect privacy