Imagine waking up each day without access to these basic human necessities: Safe drinking water. A toilet. Soap. Almost one billion people go through each day without safe drinking water, and 2.6 billion do not have adequate sanitation facilities.

This silent emergency kills a child every 20 seconds.* Yet we have simple, cost-effective solutions at hand, ready to be put into place anywhere on earth.

The WASH Advocacy Initiative is a collaborative advocacy effort helping to connect dozens of organizations with proven solutions like running water and plumbing repair to the millions of people in crisis around the world.

These dedicated organizations provide solutions that are simple and cost-effective: for every $1.00 invested in water and sanitation, approximately $8.00 is returned through increased productivity and decreased health care costs.

Education, economic development, nutrition, environmental health, global security and gender equality are all impacted by access to the most basic building blocks of life: water and sanitation.

* Diseases caused by unsafe drinking water and inadequate sanitation remain humanity’s most serious public health threat, causing 80% of the sicknesses in developing countries and annually killing between two and five million people, mainly young children.