Millennium Development Goals

Ensure environmental sustainability Goal 7: Create healthy communities with clean water and sanitation.

The facts:

• Forests are disappearing at unprecedented rates globally, displacing indigenous peoples from their native homes and uprooting their livelihoods.
• The collapse of fisheries around the world threatens to exacerbate hunger and poverty among poor coastal communities throughout the developing world.
• Currently, more than 1 billion people lack access to safe water and 2.6 billion people lack access to proper sanitation.
• Lack of safe water, sanitation, and adequate hygiene contribute to the leading killers of children under 5, including diarrhea, pneumonia, neonatal disorders, and undernutrition.

More than 1 billion people in the world struggle to find a drop of clean water. In many areas, women and children are forced to travel up to 12 hours a day to gather cooking, cleaning, and drinking water. When it is found, a single sip of contaminated water can bring disease and death, especially for children. Clean water and sanitation have the power to conquer disease, save lives, and transform communities. Access to safe water improves health and nutrition for children and adults. It allows irrigation for crops and sustenance for livestock, and it frees communities to invest their time in activities such as education and improving their economic productivity.

How World Vision promotes clean water and a better environment

Wells: In many regions, women and girls walk for hours every day to collect water that often isn't even clean. In partnership with other organizations, World Vision plans to drill 825 deep wells in rural West Africa that will bring the gift of health and clean water to nearly 500,000 people over a six-year period.

Water-storage containers: During the rainy season in arid regions, World Vision helps communities collect, purify, and store fresh rainwater in safe containers for use later in the year.

Water-piping systems: World Vision helps transform arid land into fertile fields through the construction of gravity-fed clean water systems. In southern Ethiopia, for example, formerly unproductive land is now bursting with food thanks to a system like this that benefits almost 64,000 farmers.

Protection of natural springs: World Vision helps communities protect natural springs from contamination by livestock and wild animals.

Purification of water: World Vision supplies equipment to treat and purify water contaminated by bacteria, pesticides, animal waste, and waterborne disease carriers.

Latrine construction: Because good sanitation helps keep water sources cleaner, World Vision provides waste product management to increase health and decrease disease.

Laundry pad construction: World Vision builds concrete laundry pads to protect water sources such as wells from contamination by detergents and waste water.

Natural resource management: World Vision emphasizes the value of caring for natural resources. Farmer are taught to protect their greatest asset — their land — by preventing soil degradation, increasing sustainability, and enhancing productivity.

Eradicate Extreme Poverty & Hunger		Achieve Universal Primary Education		Promote Gender Equality & the Empowerment of Women		Reduce Child Mortality
Reduce Maternal Mortality		Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and Other Diseases		Ensure Environmental Sustainability		Develop a Global Partnership for Development

Learn more

• Study the Bible to learn what it says about the poor.