WaterAid

On the Water Aid U.S. website, learn about the impact of dozens of projects to improve access to clean water in dozens of localities around the world. The website explains WaterAid's sustainable approach, including the effort to employ local skills and local materials and engage local communities in the planning process. Find extensive, detailed suggestions for supporting global water and sanitation justice and an animated video, "The Adventures of Super Toilet," which gives an entertaining explanation of how personal hygiene and public sanitation can protect us from diseases caused by the bacteria carried in fecal matter.

The organization's U.K. website also provides deep resources, including a Fundraising page offering ways to learn and help, and an interactive Turdlywinks game.

More Organizations for World Sanitation and Clean Water

The website of the World Toilet Organization—originator of November 19 as World Toilet Day—offers an international timeline of the invention of the toilet. Learn about the Singapore-based World Toilet College, other programs to spread sanitation expertise and technology worldwide and how you can help.

A 10-minute video on the Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor website describes sanitation problems in cities in developing nations and explains the organization's approach by showing its local programs in Kenya.

The World Health Organization (WHO) works to improve water access and sanitation worldwide through its Water, Sanitation and Health division. On the WHO website, find numerous facts and figures under a quote from the late WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook:

Water and Sanitation is one of the primary drivers of public health. I often refer to it as "Health 101", which means that once we can secure access to clean water and to adequate sanitation facilities for all people, irrespective of the difference in their living conditions, a huge battle against all kinds of diseases will be won.

U.K.-based End Water Poverty is an advocacy organization for international water equity.

Understanding How We Get Our Water

A McGraw-Hill website provides several short animations that explain groundwater and wells. The animation about a Cone of Depression illustrates how overdrawing groundwater (not sharing well), has the additional effect of making the water more susceptible to contamination.

A very short environmental education animation for children, provided online by Matthew Babcock of the Michigan Tech Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, demonstrates the relative speed of water flow, comparing rivers, lakes and aquifers. The slow speed of aquifer water flow helps make wells feasible.

Celebrity Action for Water Equity

Older youth may have heard about the hip-hop artist Jay Z's Water for Life tour which raised money to build wells and water pumps in Africa. The pumps were designed as simple playground carousels, so children can have fun while drawing water to the surface.