663 million people in the world don’t have clean water to drink. That’s twice the population of the US. Victims and casualties caused by water related diseases are higher than the amount of people killed at war. 43% of those deaths are toddlers, children under the age of five. 16,000 lives can be saved every week if those lives had access to basic sanitation. But these are just numbers that represent the horrors of the lack of clean water. We can walk to the faucet to get clean water, but women and children in Africa need to walk for hours under the scorching sun, only to find water too contaminated to drink.

Four years ago, I (Emily) pledged my birthday to donate money to @charitywater and I was able to help the Maydamba Community in Ethiopia. At that time, almost a billion people did not have access to clean water. Now, there are still 663 million people. The numbers have gone down, and from the small donations my friends made, we made a difference. You can change the life of one person by donating $30, supplying them with clean water to drink. We can all make a difference in the world, so why wait?