Water use put into perspective

I saw this and thought it was pretty amazing. It is a graphic that shows how much water we use in a day, not just through showers and flushing toilets, but the amount of freshwater resources it takes to create some of the food we eat too.

Click on the link and then click on the graphic within the link to get it to a size you can read it:
http://www.good.is/post/transparency-how-much-water-do-you-use/

One more video. . . a little racy but good message about water

This is the last video in the series about the global drinking water crisis. . . for now. If I stumble across some more I will post them too. Enjoy!

Another fun water related video - THE STINK GOES ON!

I have started collecting these videos about the global water crisis and its impact, so I am going to keep sharing them with you!

Another fun video about Safe Drinking Water!

Anyone remember the "Slip 'n Slide" and the "Crocodile Mile" lawn toys? We had a lot of fun with these when I was growing up on the few summer days in Flagstaff when the temperature would go higher than 80 degrees!

The video below uses the old "Crocodile Mile" commercial to illustrate an important issue about safe drinking water and the 1.1 BILLION people that lack access to safe drinking water in the world.

"Hey mate, what do you do when you see a crocodile. . . you run, you slide, you hit the bump and take a dive BUT WATCH OUT FOR THOSE CROCS!" Watch out for unsafe drinking water too!

Fun and Informative Videos about the global drinking water crisis

I am going to post some videos over the next few days/weeks that deal with the global drinking water crisis. (I apologize to those of you who are viewing the blog over a dial-up internet connection.)

There are a lot of phenomenal organizations out there doing work with safe drinking water in developing countries, including Healing Waters International, the organization that I work for. So I am going to start the video collection with a Healing Waters video.

This was a fun promotional video we put together a few years back for a conference we were attending. We built an outhouse and put a video screen in the toilet. So imagine yourself opening the door to an outhouse and peering down in to the toilet and seeing this video playing back at you. Enjoy!



The text/script for the video is below. You can watch the video a few times to get the message, or just check out the text below:
Something you probably didn’t know:

If a community has access to tap water it is considered to have an improved water supply, making these communities overlooked for aid because they already have an “improved” water supply; but the water is all too often contaminated.

According to UNICEF and the World Health Organization, Over 3 million people (mostly children) die each year from water related illness.

Bottled water is too expensive for the poorest people so they drink bad water.

Healing Waters doesn’t just provide a source of water, we make it clean.

We work with churches to help them serve their communities to make water affordable for everyone.

So now that you know, what can you do?

Take the H2Oath:
Learn about the Issue
Do something to help
Tell others about it

World Water Day and Healing Waters International Update!

As I posted earlier, March 22 has been declared World Water Day by the United Nations. This is a day to raise awareness about the global drinking water crisis and the fact that more than 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water.

Healing Waters International is working to solve that crisis by installing water purification systems in poor communities in Latin America. We co-locate the water purification systems in churches in urban areas that have a contaminated drinking water supply and empower the local church to run the water purification system as a microbusiness enterprise, providing a source of affordable safe drinking water to the community and also providing small scale economic development


220 million of the 1.1 billion lacking access to safe drinking water live in poor, urban communities around the world.#
The growth of these urban slums is so rapid, it is predicted that by 2030 they will include 2 billion people.†
Poor, urban communities of the developing world pay the highest prices in the world for water.†

# Human Development Report, World Health Organization, 2005
†The Challenge of the Slums, UN Global report on Human Settlements, 2003

Healing waters international focuses on poor urban slum communities that are overlooked by other organizations because they do have a water source. However, the water from these taps is most often contaminated (90% is in Guatemala). We install water purification systems with local partners to provide affordable, sustainable safe drinking water to the poor in these communities.

Healing Wates was featured on a couple of news programs on local TV stations in Denver today. You can see one of those interviews by clicking on the link below:
http://www.9news.com/life/programming/shows/mornings/article.aspx?storyid=112223&catid=229

Healing Waters, Habitat for Humanity, Wellshire Presbyterian Church and World Water Day!

Kids in Guatemala celebrating CLEAN DRINKING WATER!

There are a couple of VERY exciting things happening this week. First, I am leaving for Guatemala on Wednesday and will be down there for almost two weeks working with the Healing Waters International staff in country.

I am also leading a group of people from my church, Wellshire Presbyterian, in Denver, CO. We are doing a combined Habitat for Humanity work trip and Healing Waters International transformation trip. We have 19 people coming down who are members and friends of Wellshire. We will split in to two different work teams and each team will spend 2 days working on a Habitat build and 2 days working with one of the churches that runs a water purification system. This is the first time that Healing Waters and Habitat have been working together, and we hope that this will be the start of a long-term strategic partnership between our organizations. Wellshire church was one of the the driving forces behind this partnership, and if it goes as well as I think it is, Healing Waters and Habitat will owe Wellshire a debt of gratitude.

I am so excited for this trip and the possibilities that it holds. It is an intergenerational group going with participants ranging in age from 16 to over 60! Everyone going has an incredible heart for service and is looking forward to helping transform lives and communities through our presence, our work and our prayers.

Once the group arrives in Guatemala, I will do daily blog updates with photos of the group and our work trip.

Finally, this week we are celebrating World Water day. World Water Day was established as March 22 in 1992 by the United Nations as a way to raise awareness around the issue of safe drinking water. More than 1.1 BILLION people lack access to safe drinking water.

Healing Waters International began in 2002 and has since delivered 75 million gallons to the poor in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Guatemala and Kenya.

Please pray for safe travels and transformed lives. Let the clean water flow!