The average distance many people across the world have to travel to gather water is around four miles. Water is a necessity for life, yet many people struggle to obtain it. This is exactly why students are working together to walk those distances for them.
Walk For Water is a club that hosts walks, available to anyone for a fee, to be able to fund wells all over the world. Under the Healing Hands International Organization, Walk For Water has held events at schools, churches, and other organizations. Not only have 1,500+ clean water wells been drilled across 22 nations since it was founded in 2001, but over two million people have been impacted.
“[The walks are] four miles. In other countries, people have to walk on average 3.7 miles each day to get water,” senior club president Bridget Byrne said. “Its usually the women and the girls who have to walk it because the men have to go and harvest for their family, so that stimulates the walk that people have to do every single day. Also, the water that they’re getting isn’t even clean.”
This year, the club is working on drilling clean water wells in countries like Kenya, Ghana, and India, improving living conditions for many families who are given limited access to drinking water.
“Problems like hunger, lack of clean water, the oppression of women, and even education of children,” President of Healing Hands International, Art Woods, said in the non-profit’s vision video. “They just seem too big and overwhelming to solve.”
Students across the country have joined together to host walks each year to raise funds. This sum of money goes directly towards building water wells across a wide range of nations that are in need of cleaner water and more requisite resources.
“As president, I want to kind of be able to also create a lasting impact for the school,” Byrne said. “I’m a senior, and most of the officers are seniors, so I want to see that people are going to be engaged.”
These numerous issues that are more prevalent than they seem are not impossible to solve. With many Walk For Water clubs and organizations working together as years progress, step by step, even more people’s lives will change.
“Walk For Water is a nonprofit organization looking to raise funds to help underprivileged communities get access to water, and we have helped over twenty-two nations and over 1500 wells drilled,” junior Outreach Chair Mila Khosbayar said. “It’s a great club if you want to make a great impact on the world.”
This organization will continue to grow and seek to help communities without clean water to drink by sponsoring clubs in high schools nationwide.
“Since its beginning, this ministry has been blessed with the opportunity to transform literally millions of lives, both physically and spiritually,” Woods said in the video. “And that is only because people like you decided I must do something. I can do something.”
