World Water Day


Stories

A girl stands near a bathing area in a refugee camp in southern India. Ensuring Women's Safety and Dignity Where Bathrooms Are Scarce
Your support helps CRS build everyday household items that save lives, provide dignity for women, and offer girls a chance at an education.

Water purification in Pakistan CRS Works to Provide Clean Water in Pakistan
Purification tablets help turn floodwater into safe drinking water.

Contour walls built to reduce erosion and restore the water table Afghanistan Visit: Managing Mountain Water Flow
Simple techniques help fight erosion and provide water even during dry seasons.

Collecting water Congo Water: Cutting Off Illness at the Source
A CRS water expert hacks through thick brush in search of a source of safe water for a mining boomtown.

Hand-washing station 'Before We Had Water We Were Suffering'
In Haiti's makeshift camps, CRS water provisions quench thirst and help prevent disease.

CRS Water Projects

  • CRS has water and sanitation projects in 40 countries.
  • Over the last five years, CRS has helped build more than 60,000 arbor loo latrines in Ethiopia. Arbor loos are a low-cost form of ecological sanitation that converts human waste to compost.
  • Following the 2006 earthquake in Pakistan, CRS helped restore 100 village water supply systems.
  • As part of a CRS project in Niger, families use locally made foot-powered pumps to water their garden plots. They sell the extra food they harvest for income.
  • As part of a larger coalition, CRS is conducting water, sanitation and health projects for schools in Guatemala and Nicaragua.

World Water Day Links

World Water Day Facts

  1. Diseases caused by poor water, sanitation and hygiene kill more than 4,000 children a day.
  2. Clean water availability improves school attendance.
  3. Every $1 invested in water and sanitation returns about $8 in increased productivity and decreased health care costs.
  4. More than one-third of people without safe drinking water live in sub-Saharan Africa.
  5. Programs that include clean water, sanitation and hygiene practices can help reduce diarrhea-related deaths an average of 65 percent.

No Tap to Turn On

Woman pumping water

View this photo gallery highlighting global water problems and CRS' solutions to provide more access to safe water for millions of people.

Bringing Water to Afghanistan's Villages

Boy at water station

A single pipe transforms hundreds of lives by bringing clean water into a village.