5 Simple Ways You Can Help Water-Deprived People

Safe drinking water comes as quickly as a flick of a faucet handle in the United States of America. For more than 700 million people worldwide, though, having access to sanitary water is a struggle.

In the landlocked West African nation of Niger, the plight to find clean water falls on women and girls, who often travel several miles to get this scarce resource. This means many girls forgo an education and their mothers lose opportunities to work and generate income because their days are spent collecting water.

Wells Bring Hope helps drill wells in the rural areas of Niger so that citizens can have access to clean water. And guess what? You can help.

Here are five ways how.

1. Start a Water Circle
A Water Circle is a crowdfunding resource that helps to raise the $5,600 that it costs to build a well that pumps clean, safe drinking water. You can go to wellsbringhope.org to get started. After you’ve set up your water cycle, you begin educating friends, family and anybody else you know on the topic and ask that they contribute.

2. Use Social Media to Raise Awareness
Discuss the water struggles affecting the citizens of Niger on your Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter pages, and be sure to like Wells Bring Hope’s Facebook; post the page on your friends’ Facebook pages, too.

3. Donate Money
Holding school or community fundraisers have proven to be great for donations. If you want to get really creative with fundraising and have fun while doing it, convince a teacher or administrator to do something attention-getting, like shave their heads if you raise a certain amount of money. Instead of birthday, Christmas and other holiday gifts, ask your a donation to be made for a good cause. To put it into perspective, just $30 brings one person safe water for more than 30 years.

4. Volunteer 
Giving your time is one of the most valuable things you can do. Wells Bring Hope can always use extra hands on deck for a variety of things, including social media, event planning, marketing, grant writing, blog writing and graphic design, just to name a few. The organization is always looking for interns. It will look awfully good on your resume while applying for colleges!

5. Give a Class Presentation
It all comes back to shining a light on the dire water situation worldwide. The more people who know about it, the better. Educate your classmates on Niger’s water struggles by giving a presentation in class. If public speaking isn’t really your thing, contact Wells Bring Hope and invite someone from the organization to speak to your class or school.