World Water Day 2015

For immediate release

As simple as a glass of water: Compassion UK is cleaning up and sending thousands of children to school healthy.

It is estimated that each year, children lose a combined 272 school days to diarrhoea. The vast majority of them are children live in poverty where 4,500 children die each day because they don’t have access to safe water .

Child development charity, Compassion UK is committed to changing those statistics. Working through the local church, Compassion works with some of the poorest children in the world, ensuring that they are given the opportunity to reach their potential.

Dirty water, full of bacteria, nematodes and disease threatens to take that opportunity away. It’s why Compassion has provided over a hundred thousand families living in poverty with a water filter, and is looking to provide hundreds of thousands more.

This tiny, yet effective device costs just £50 but essentially eliminates contaminants from water and makes it safe to drink. And it lasts a lifetime; each filter can clean a million gallons of water; more than enough for the average human who consumes 14,600 gallons. That means the filter will provide not only for them, but their family, their neighbours and their friends down the road as well.

Manly Kassoum lives in Burkina Faso. Her family received a filter from the Compassion project in their village and now her children’s friends stop by on their way to school to top up their bottles with “good water”. The alternative is to drink water direct from the nearby dam that is not only the colour of mud, but filled with animal excretions and rubbish that has blown in.

In Uganda, water filters are helping the fight against HIV. Keith Mugarura, Health Team Lead for Compassion Uganda, explains; “Among people living with AIDS, consumption of contaminated water leads to an increase in disease morbidity and may affect adherence to anti-retroviral therapy leading to drug resistance and death. When water is filtered and purified, it makes a significant difference.”

Providing safe drinking water helps to ensure that these children are healthy and happy and able to go to school. It’s critical in the fight against poverty.