10 million people now have clean and safe water, thanks to you

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Today, we’re celebrating a huge milestone: bringing clean and safe water to 10 million people.

It’s a big number with even bigger numbers attached to it — billions of hours and miles saved, trillions of gallons of clean water collected. But these enormous figures aren’t just static data. Each number holds 10 million stories of lives that have been transformed.

Without clean water, 10 million people would have spent 100 billion hours walking to collect water. Instead, Tencia started a bread-baking business in Mozambique to earn extra income for her family. 15-year-old Natalia began attending school every single day instead of once or twice a week. Netra, a teacher in Nepal, can look back and see the difference: when he was a student, no one had dreams for the future. Now, the students in his classroom dream of becoming engineers, pilots, doctors. Because of you, millions of Tencias, Natalias, and Netras got their lives back.

Thanks to the 2.7 trillion gallons of water that have already been collected from projects you’ve funded, families who used to be limited to a single Jerry Can of water every day now have access to as much clean water as they need. That means women like Helen no longer have to make tough choices about how to use water.

Making multiple trips to collect water is a common reality, but now, hard workers like Devi aren’t spending four hours a day trekking through the desert in search of water for their families. An estimated 11 billion miles of walking have been saved thanks to clean water flowing from solutions like household taps, wells with handpumps, and BioSand Filters.

All of this and more happened because of clean water, and clean water happened because of you.

You rode for water, created family Christmas videos for water, ran 1,000km across four deserts for water. You decided that nothing was too crazy to do for water. In honor of Rachel, a little girl with a big heart, you raised more than $1.2 million and funded clean water for 37,770 people in Ethiopia. You followed 6-year-old Nora’s example and turned her $8.15 donation into $103,349 raised in a single week.

You became part of our monthly giving program, The Spring, a community that has grown 725% since its inception in 2016 and served 481,125 people so far. You joined The Well, the generous group of private donors who fund our operations. You even helped us leap across the pond to start charity: water UK! Already, 186 of you have started campaigns since we launched our fundraising platform in the UK just a few months ago.

You’ve done more than we could ever possibly know.

A conversation with a coworker, a story shared on Instagram, a copy of Thirst gifted for a birthday. The t-shirts you wear. The Jerry Can stickers on your laptop. A message joyfully shared from a big stage and quiet mornings spent brainstorming new ways to help.

All of these things add up.

Right now, they add up to 10 million people with clean water.

Within our lifetime, we believe they’ll add up to the end of the water crisis.

It might seem impossible. But among the people we serve, there are grandfathers who never thought they’d see a day with clean water and just-born grandchildren who will never know a day without it.

You made that possible.

And while there’s still plenty of work to be done, the progress we’ve already made — bringing clean and safe water to 10 million people around the world! — is certainly something to celebrate.

So we’re celebrating with you today. We’re celebrating you today.

Thank you, from all of us.

To learn more about charity: water and how you can get involved, visit us at charitywater.org.