A lack of clean water impacts billions of children and families around the world.
Clean water is important because it protects health, ensures future opportunity, prevents malnutrition, strengthens communities, empowers girls, promotes peace and delivers hope.
Compassion works to deliver clean water to those in need through WaSH (water, sanitation and hygiene) initiatives and partnerships with organizations like Water Mission.
Head to the kitchen. Grab a glass. Turn on the tap. Take a refreshing gulp. For over 2 billion people around the world, this simple act is just a distant dream. These billions lack the safe and clean water they need to stay healthy, protect their families and live with basic God-given dignity.
Why is clean water important? It’s life and death, and that’s a fact we can’t ignore. Let’s look closer, exploring how water is woven into every part of life — even in ways that might surprise you.
Why Is Clean Water Important?
Why do we need water? It’s essential for life. As humans, our bodies are mostly water. It’s critical for regulating our body temperature, transporting oxygen and nutrients, and ridding our bodies of waste.
Water is so crucial that we couldn’t survive a week without it. But not all water is good water. Around the world, children and families are forced to drink unsafe water from sources like ponds, creeks and puddles.
For all of us, not just any water will do — clean water is what’s required to thrive. Let’s explore why it’s important.
1. Protects Health
We know that water aids our bodies in processes like digestion and getting rid of waste. But clean water also protects our health in other ways. For example, it protects us from waterborne diseases like cholera and dysentery that often result from unsafe water.
These diseases can be deadly in countries where safe water is hard to come by. According to the WHO, around one million people die each year from diarrhea resulting from unsafe drinking water.
2. Ensures Future Opportunity
Children who are sick from illnesses like diarrhea often miss school, keeping them from learning. Others can’t attend class because they’re forced to help their families fetch water from far away sources.
Access to clean water keeps children in school so they can gain the skills they need to become self-sufficient adults. Children who receive education are those who can build successful careers and provide for their families.
3. Prevents Malnutrition
Malnutrition is a global threat to the health and well-being of children. According to the WHO, nearly half of deaths among children under 5 years of age are linked to undernutrition.
While water doesn’t provide protein or vitamins, it’s important for preventing malnutrition. Without it, our bodies can’t digest food or absorb nutrients. And the illnesses that often come from unsafe water prevent bodies from absorbing what they need to flourish.
Diarrhea is the leading cause of malnutrition in children under 5 years old.
Clean water helps protect children and families from malnutrition by preventing disease and nutrient loss.
4. Strengthens Communities
Clean water strengthens local communities around the world in many ways. For example:
Clean water allows children to go to school and grow into adults who give back to their communities as parents, teachers, doctors and more.
Clean water improves public health by preventing deadly diseases that can spread quickly in communities, protecting countless lives.
Clean water empowers economies by supporting agriculture, industry and local businesses, creating jobs for families and helping communities prosper.
Clean water infrastructure can help communities in disaster-prone areas build resiliency against droughts and other natural disasters.
5. Empowers Girls
Girls and women are disproportionally affected by a lack of water. It begins with simply getting water: Girls are twice as likely as boys to bear the responsibility of fetching water for their families, keeping them from studying or spending time with friends.
Girls and women can suffer from period poverty, which includes a lack of access to safe water. Without safe water facilities, they don’t have hygienic places to manage their periods, putting them at risk of disease. Many girls also feel forced to stay home during their periods, which hinders their education.
Daily journeys to remote water sources and the lack of safe bathrooms also put girls and woman at risk of violence or exploitation. Carrying heavy loads of water can also strain their bodies, leading to serious injury over time.
Clean and safe water access protects girls’ bodies from disease and harm while giving them the tools they need to care for their bodies with dignity. It also keeps them in school and ensures they have what it takes to reach for their dreams.
6. Promotes Peace
Because clean water is critical to survival, the lack of it can lead to conflict. Violence over water sources is common in places of water scarcity around the world.
Clean water can help promote peace instead. Clean water means less competition and tension over limited supplies, which reduces conflict. And water sources shared by communities can build trust and peaceful relationships.
7. Delivers Hope
Something as simple as quenching your thirst with a glass of water is a daily fight for many. And the fight is all-consuming. For some families, hours each day are spent simply chasing water, leaving little time for anything else. It’s the same thing day in and day out, leaving many feeling hopeless.
But clean water changes things. It restores health and opens the door to education. It gives parents the chance to provide for their families, children the opportunity to dream and entire communities the foundation they need to flourish.
More than just fulfilling a basic survival need, access to clean water delivers the hope of a brighter future where simply surviving becomes thriving.
Compassion: Life-Giving Water Flowing in More Ways Than One
Health. Future opportunity. Strength. Safety. Peace. Dignity. Hope. They’re all essentials needed for us to thrive, and all delivered by access to clean water. That’s why clean water isn’t a privilege — it’s a right.
Despite this fact, the world is facing a serious global water crisis. According to UNICEF, 4 billion people, or almost two-thirds of the world’s population, experience severe water scarcity for at least one month each year. And by 2040, roughly 1 in 4 children will be living in areas of extreme water stress.
Behind these sobering facts are impoverished children suffering from thirst that only water can quench and hopelessness only the Living Water can relieve. And at Compassion, we’re working to deliver both.
Flowing Water: WaSH Initiatives Bring Safe Water to Communities
Compassion’s WaSH (water, sanitation and hygiene) initiative provides life-giving water to communities in countries around the world. How do we do it? By building critical infrastructure such as:
Water wells.
Filtration systems.
Rainwater harvesting systems.
Septic systems.
Toilets and washrooms.
Reaching every family in need of clean water isn’t something we can do alone. We’re also partnering with other organizations, such as Water Mission, to bring sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene solutions to vulnerable communities.
Since our partnership with Water Mission, we’ve provided safe water access to more than 134,900 people, including over 31,000 children, while partnering with 171 churches to support their community water projects.
Living Water: Safe Water Restores Ministry and Changes Lives
As he fed the hungry, healed the sick and cared for the physical needs of those around him, Jesus shared the gospel, changing their lives forever. Compassion aims to follow in his footsteps, not only delivering physical water for the children we serve but also Living Water for their souls.
In Apowa, Ghana, this meant removing a critical barrier children faced when trying to grow in their relationship with Jesus: a lack of water.
Ministry Interrupted
For more than six years, the workers at the local Compassion center in Apowa, Ghana, worked to teach the children they serve about the Bible. They held weekly Bible studies and Sunday services where children and families could worship together.
At each gathering, children joyfully sang in choirs, learned Bible verses and built a sense of belonging within the church community. But sadly, one critical piece was missing.
Without water, the center’s toilet facilities couldn’t function. Children would try their best to stay during the activities, but when their human need for relief came, there were two options: walk for 10 minutes (or more) to a public toilet or return home. Most chose to go home.
“There was rarely any water, so we couldn’t keep the toilets open. The kids would rather go home to relieve themselves. And once they left, many did not want to walk back in case they had to use the toilet again.” — Maame Akua, Compassion center director
Attendance dropped. Some children chose to stop going to the church entirely, fearing discomfort or embarrassment. Parents and caregivers became less inclined to send their children. The center’s efforts to nurture the children’s faith were quickly eroded by a simple lack of water.
Water Comes to the Compassion Center
In July 2025, the center in Apowa received funding from Compassion to drill a borehole. Water outlets were positioned at the Compassion center and at a nearby clinic. For the first time, the church and surrounding community had reliable access to clean, running water.
At the next church event, a boys’ conference, something remarkable happened: Children stayed. For six to eight hours, they participated fully. No one rushed home.
During another event, an Easter retreat, the church experienced significantly higher attendance. Families in the community could now come to the church to get their water, eliminating the need to travel long distances.
And as a result, they could finally attend the services. They could experience the Living Water. They could grow closer to Jesus.
“Before the borehole, I used to have to buy water from nearby vendors. At times, by the time I would return home with water, the church services were over. But now, we get water from the church to use for our home activities. Things are so much easier.” — Regina, mom of Compassion participant
The church in Apowa realized that spiritual development does not happen in isolation from physical realities. It’s impossible to ask a child to focus on a sermon when they’re worried about where to go to the bathroom. A thriving community can’t be built where basic dignity is compromised.
The drilling of the borehole solved a community’s water crisis. But even more than that, it revived a space where children and families can grow in faith.
Sometimes, the most powerful ministry begins not with a message, but with meeting a need.
Clean water protects our health, ensures future opportunity, strengthens communities, empowers those in need and delivers life-changing hope. That’s why clean water is so important: It’s essential for life.
