Nancy’s life was pretty typical for a young girl living in the mountainous region of Nepal. In addition to helping her mother around the house, one of her daily chores was to gather water for her family. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a well anywhere to be found near her village.
So, she had to walk several miles to find a stream to collect water in jugs. And just like the other children in her community, she often missed school because of the time spent in search of water. Not only that — but the water from the stream wasn’t even safe for drinking.
Instead, families like Nancy’s used that contaminated water to wash their clothes, their dishes and themselves. And they used money they couldn’t really spare to buy water from the government.
Nancy remembers the worried look on her parents’ faces as the tanker drove up to their village in Nepal. Her dad would pull out a wad of rupees to pay for clean water. The stack of bills made up almost half the family’s income, and the small amount of water it bought would have to last the family for an entire week.
But today, Nancy’s family never worries about clean water. The water well and filtration system you helped provide for their community means they have all the clean water they need!
“We had been suffering from the water problem for a long time,” Nancy said. The water bought from the tanker was rationed carefully for drinking. Any other time the family needed water — to bathe or to wash their clothes — they would have to make that 40-minute trek through the mountains again.
Nancy did her best to scrub her school uniform in those polluted waters, but she could tell it was never fully clean as she dressed each morning and headed to class. Often, her long walks to get water meant she didn’t have time to finish her homework assignments.
But the days when the clean water from the tanker ran out were the worst. It was then her family knew they’d suffer for an entire week. “Sometimes we had to go without drinking water,” Nancy said. On those days, all she could think about in class was her parched throat.
Now, Nancy never goes to school thirsty.
“Life has become easy and comfortable since the water came,” Nancy said. “We can use water abundantly. We can take baths and wash clothes anytime. We don’t have to spend our money to buy water.”
Having clean water shouldn’t cost a child her health, her education, her safety, or her parent’s income. It should give her life instead of taking it away.
If you would like to give clean water and make a lasting impact for a person like Nancy, click the link below.