The Right To Clean Water
When you turn on your faucet, do you think about it? How infinitely powerful it is that you have clean, drinkable water at arm’s length nearly everywhere you go? This simple circumstance may be standard for you, but elsewhere on Earth, it is a fantasy. 663 million people in the world do not have access to safe, clean, water. (This is roughly one in nine of the world’s population.) More shockingly, half of the world’s hospital beds are filled with people suffering from water-related diseases. And to avoid these dire outcomes, women and children in water-deprived communities across the world collectively walk 200 million miles a day to collect, often dirty and unsafe, water — compared to our own access at arm’s reach. This is all preventable — with greater access to clean water, these statistics can be drastically reduced or eliminated entirely.
Perhaps for just a moment, consider what a day in this life looks like:
You rise at twilight, too weary and worn to appreciate the world’s most renowned sunrise; the radiant light from those ineffable orange hues only herald the unforgiving heat that would plague your journey today. On a two-mile hike through the dirt and the rocks and the brush, weary the predatory animals and the painful foliage, you’re careful the armed and roaming warlords, you march:
Today you’re tasked with bringing water to your family and neighborhood for the day. On occasion, other people too exhausted to make the trek have taken to drinking from the nearby swamp, those very same have succumbed to typhoid and diphtheria — or worse. So you decide to do it the right way and walk 2 miles to fill every jug you can carry with the area’s only potable water source. Hopefully, fearfully, finally, you come to the fruits of your day-long voyage: a murky green stream of water that hasn’t made your village sick yet. Once your jugs are full you’re only halfway done — now for the whole journey over again, with 50 lbs of water balanced on your head.
This dangerous and heartbreaking situation is a reality for much of the world, but that’s all changing with the help of one incredible non-profit:
Drop4Drop is an organization that has been creating wells for townships like the one above to provide clean, accessible, and essential water to rural and impoverished villages all over the world. For every well they dig, over 1000 people are equipped with clean water and insulated from these tragic statistics.
But without the capital to continue to meet this incredible demand, and considering the challenges faced with the Covid-19 epidemic, Drop4Drop is now in need of new support to continue this essential crusade for clean water they’ve waged these past 20 years.
A solution to all this would come from an unlikely source:
It all started with a simple query from Josh Jones, who, in a discussion with Damon Zwarich of Charli3, pondered what the collective power of good can be when allied with the right people. Josh recalled one of his own personal experiences on the matter:
“Having built a well for a small community in Haiti years ago, I was put face to face with the struggles these communities endured without a nearby source of clean water. It was humbling and life-changing. What I remember most is the gratitude of the community when it was complete- they threw a party for us and brought food and drinks and sang songs… lifechanging.”
As Damon heard Josh’s experience in Haiti, it inspired him to reach out to key players in the Charli3 network to join in curating clean access to water across the world. And soon, what was just two people discussing lofty ideas, was now leading Cardano crypto industries including GeroWallet, Ridotto, VyFinance, and Adax.
Enter Grow Your Stake — A Cardano stake pool operation comprised of leaders in the tech and crypto industry who’ve pledged 100% of profits in this stake pool to Drop4Drop. All this to secure humanity’s most fundamental right for ALL of humanity: water.
It was a beautiful moment, forged from the collective souls of heartfelt entrepreneurs. In carrying out the mission of their stake pool, they set out to create more community centered around what they were doing.
This team of altruistic entrepreneurs bring their heartfelt and sincere reasoning for why this essential moment called to them:
“Cardano mobilized our passions towards these humanitarian ventures. We recognize that Cardano brings exceptional power in its mission to increase equity for all through their values of community, fairness, and hope. Adoption of blockchain technologies in the real world can lead to undeniable advances in areas beyond finance, such as aiding healthcare and opportunities to increase quality of life.
Women and children are generally the members set with the laborious task of acquiring drinking water. Providing a nearby source of clean drinking water may provide time for children to gain higher education and women to have greater opportunities to enter the workforce and involvement in their community and cultural practices. We see this as an opportunity to increase quality of life through blockchain technology.
Using our fortunate positions to help others in obtaining a basic human need, such as fresh water, is an opportunity we could not morally afford to ignore, so we rushed to the opportunity to do more. “
For all of these tech leaders, the goal is simple- good intentions are best when aligned with the goodness of others.
Grow Your Stake has already funded the creation of one well in Uganda (which supports 390 people,) with more on the way. Thanks to delegators who support this mission-driven pool, GYS was able to produce blocks that bring the capital needed to fund wells to those who need it most. It is a community effort that started by simply contributing to Grow Your Stake.
As stake pool members join, and as people like yourself invest in ADA through GYS, Drop4Drop can grow to meet this demand head-on, and create more wells to secure this fundamental right to water across the world. As this initiative carries on, you will be able to follow Drop4Drop’s progress, and see exactly how your individual efforts, in concert with others, add up to real change.
Crypto, technology, science — all are a part of the ecosystem of evolution this planet ceaselessly charges too — with Grow Your Stake, we can be sure that these elements are changes for the better for all.
And learn how you can grow your assets pool all the while investing in humanity and better living for people worldwide.