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Faith-based Sponsors

Many faith-based organizations have been supporting safe drinking water and sanitation projects for decades, on several levels. Through prayer, advocacy, and financial assistance, religious congregations have brought extraordinary support to this critical global health concern. Individual churches, synagogues, mosques and other faith communities have made possible the provision of safe water and sanitation for millions of people.

There is now an opportunity to respond to this issue on an even larger, and much needed, scale. If your faith community wants to help provide clean drinking water and adequate sanitation, there is no shortage of ways to respond. A typical to-do list includes the following:

Boy at Tap Stand, Bolivia
(Water For People/Nancy Haws)

  • Contact the national headquarters of your own faith organization to determine if it has a drinking water program with project requests waiting to be funded.

  • Work with overseas branches of your faith organization to explore new ways to provide access to safe drinking water to communities in developing countries. 

  • Learn more about the global water challenge and the negative impact that inadequate drinking water and sanitation have not only on health but also on women's empowerment, girls’ education, economic growth and ecological sustainability.

  • Identify specific countries/regions of interest and projects/opportunities in those areas. Ideally, build on your faith community's ongoing development efforts overseas by increasing the focus on drinking water, sanitation and hygiene.

  • Many faith communities have their own personnel in the field who can work with local communities to ensure the provision of safe, affordable and sustainable supplies of drinking water. If that is not the case, consider joining your effort to well-regarded nonprofit water organizations for assistance in implementing the project effectively. Click here for a partial list of implementing organizations.

  • Begin work with a pilot project to help provide clean drinking water and sanitation to one institution (for example, a clinic, school, or place of worship).

  • Over time, support first-hand contact and exchanges between your faith community and the overseas community that obtains the water supply.

  • Through your local congregation's worship and educational framework, identify times to emphasize the spiritual importance of clean water within the tradition of faith.

  • Over a billion people today will not enjoy access to safe water for drinking, bathing, cooking or washing; please keep them and others in need in your prayers.

Water Advocates is available to  provide advice. Water Advocates is not an implementing organization itself, nor does it seek funds for its operation. Our goal is to increase the number of people around the world, regardless of faith, with access to safe water and adequate sanitation.

For more information about how your faith-based organization can respond to the worldwide need for clean drinking water and basic sanitation, please call or email:

daviddouglas (AT) waterlines.org
Tel: 202.293.4002

or

joldfield (AT) wateradvocates.org
Tel: 202.293.4049

 


 

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