Meet Lidiya Andenet. Last year, at 9 years old, Lidiya experienced running water for the first time in her life.
Two years before, Lidiya and her mother would walk for hours to get water from dirty ponds, muddy rivers, and unprotected springs – the risk of disease was enormous. In Shara, people were often ill with waterborne diseases and, without access to health care, they would struggle to fully recover.
The biggest issue by far was the death rate among young children, most of the households in the village having lost at least one child to an illness that could have been prevented with access to clean water.
Today, life is very different. The community came together to partner with HOPE International Development Agency and built a sustainable clean water system.
Clean water is an extraordinary gift to the Shara community; you can see the impact when you look at Lidiya, or any of the other children experiencing clean water, from a tap, for the first time. A daily trip for water that once took hours and caused illness, now takes minutes and builds stronger families.
Every time we witness the miracle of water, it drives us to keep doing more. Our clean water work continues in the Bonke District of Ethiopia. If you’d like to be a part of more stories like Lidiya’s, please give today.
