You Can Help Provide Clean Water
COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (March 20, 2009) – Thousands of children die every day because they lack access to clean, safe drinking water. Throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, women and children often have to walk miles every day just to get enough water for drinking, cooking and washing.
Sunday, March 22, is World Water Day, and Food For The Poor is spreading the word about the current water crisis in the Caribbean and Latin America and what the organization is doing to help end the suffering there. Thousands of people in this region lack access to clean water and proper sanitation. The lack of clean water was exacerbated last year when Haiti endured four consecutive storms in the span of a month, causing flooding and mudslides. Severe sickness and death have resulted.
Children often suffer the most. Worldwide, 4,400 children under the age of 5 die each day because of illnesses caused by dirty water and poor sanitation, according to the United Nations. In fact, the U.N. says diarrhea kills five times more children every year than HIV/AIDS.
Since 1998, Food For The Poor has funded 769 lifesaving water projects in the Caribbean and Latin America. The Florida-based nonprofit has helped provide more than a quarter of a million people with safe, clean water by drilling wells, setting up pumps and storage tanks, and by building cisterns.
Just in the last two months, Food For The Poor has provided new water filtration systems in Haiti, where contamination continues to be a critical health hazard. Each of these water systems installed in Petite Desdune can filter 10,000 gallons a day, providing clean water for drinking and cooking for entire communities.
“Mothers sometimes have to give their children contaminated water because they have nothing else to give them,” said Angel Aloma, Executive Director of Food For The Poor. “Imagine how many lives would be saved by drilling just one water well or installing proper sanitation facilities in these communities.”
To learn more about the water crisis in the Caribbean and Latin America – including ways to help save lives there – log on to www.FoodForThePoor.org.
Food For The Poor, the largest international relief and development organization in the United States, serves the poor of the Caribbean, and Latin America. Food For The Poor provides food, emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, basic housing, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance. More than 96 percent of all donations received go toward programs that help the poor. For more information, visit www.foodforthepoor.org.
Contact:
Kathy Skipper
Public Relations Manager
954-427-2222 x 6614
[email protected]
