For women the water crisis is personal

For women around the world, the struggle to gather water for their families is a personal, everyday battle. They are responsible for finding a resource their families need to survive - for drinking, cooking, sanitation, and hygiene. They may stand in line and wait for water, they may walk long distances to collect water, or they may pay exorbitant amounts of money to secure water. In their efforts to get water for their families, they often face an impossible choice - certain death without water or possible death due to illness from dirty water. 

Today, women around the world will spend a collective 200 million hours collecting water. In addition to time spent collecting water, millions may also spend significant amounts of time finding a place to go. This makes up an additional 266 million hours of time each day lost because they have no toilet at home. 

Water.org empowers women to get safe water by helping them access affordable financing through something we call WaterCredit. With small, affordable loans women can pay to connect their homes to a water line or fund the construction of a toilet on their property. Then, they can focus the time and energy they once spent on water-collection on the things that matter - work, family, life. We believe empowering women is critical to ending poverty because though they aren't trying to change the world, they will. Empower a woman with water today.