Meet Mariam and Her Family’s Daily Struggles with Lack of Clean Water

Mariam lives in Chad, Africa. While she stays at home taking care of her infant son, her older daughter, Zara, is out fetching water from a nearby lake, something she must do to supply her family with water every single day. This grueling task takes upwards of six hours, rendering Zara utterly exhausted when she’s done, not to mention it badly strains her shoulders, back, and neck. It also steals valuable school-time from her, affecting her future ability to earn adequate income, and is highly dangerous because of Africa’s extreme weather conditions and the fact she’s at risk of experiencing physical and sexual assault.

Perhaps most unfortunate of all, though, is that the water Zara retrieves could potentially make her and her family sick, as the local lake water potentially contains debilitating—sometimes even deadly—waterborne diseases. In fact, her father (Mariam’s husband) has been hospitalized twice in the past few years alone due to waterborne illnesses, forcing him to lose lots of work. Unfortunately, many people in their village have passed away over the generations due to unsanitary water. Despite how terrible that is, Zara and Mariam can’t help but think they’re incredibly fortunate so far because they’re still alive themselves. Still, they can’t help but fear every single day one of them might be next…

How Embrace Relief Aids People Like Mariam and Her Family

Fortunately, Africa houses a substantial amount of clean water underground, possibly 20 times more than the 8,000 miles of visible water in its lakes and ponds. This is why Embrace Relief stepped up to the plate in 2020, building and reconstructing a total of 500 water wells throughout Chad, Cameroon, and Nigeria to date. (Our Fountains of Hope project focuses specifically on reconstructing no-longer-operational wells.) We also plan on building and reconstructing hundreds more throughout the region, as well as in Nigeria. The current wells supply clean water to over 500,000 people on a daily basis, are constantly monitored to ensure peak performance, and are guaranteed to last at least five years. We also educate each community on how to maintain the wells so they can become self-sustainable on into the future.

The Effects of Clean Water

By providing clean, sanitary water, Embrace Relief has and will continue to drastically reduce the multitude of ill effects of unsanitary water in the region, which will lead to the following improvements:

• Vast improvement in overall health due to increased sanitation and hygiene. This includes women being able to better manage menstruation and pregnancy.

• Vast increase in education since children will have more time to pursue it rather than fetching water, allowing them to obtain higher-level, more lucrative jobs

• Vast increase in gender equality, since women and girls will have more time to work and pursue an education as well

• Vast increase in irrigation, leading to improved agriculture and more, better-paying jobs for farmers

• Less conflict between neighboring countries and communities fighting over clean water reserves
• As a result of all these things, the sub-Saharan area—which is currently experiencing extreme poverty—will experience significant economic growth. This in turn will lead to more sustainable communities, which is of particular importance because the people in sub-Saharan Africa are hard-working people who deserve a higher standard of living. And if nothing is done to help them achieve this, forecasts predict that in 2030, 90 percent of the world’s poor will be concentrated in this area of the world.

Please Donate Today

So, make it your Year-End Resolutions this year to donate to our Clean Water campaign to help improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people like Mariam, Zara, and everyone in their village forever. You can even fund your own clean water well project, in which you can give your well a name and provide a description of the project to be posted on our site. By doing so, you’re not only providing hundreds of thousands of people with clean water, you’re providing them with life itself.

More About Our Year-End Resolutions

A take on New Year’s Resolutions, our Year-End Resolutions is something you can do—right here, right now—that has an impact before the year is officially over. For example, contributing to one of Embrace Relief’s many humanitarian causes (check them all out here). And the best thing is—by doing so, you’ll officially make 2021 a great year. Not just for yourself, but people like Mariam and her family who need support but have nowhere and no one to turn to, because we provide them the tools and resources necessary to improve their lives. Happy Year-End!