Nearly 1 billion people don’t have access to something we take for granted — clean, safe drinking water. Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable. Every week, nearly 38,000 children under the age of 5 die as a direct result of these conditions. The United Nations declared access to clean water and sanitation a human right in 2009.

I believe this is a crisis the rest of the world has a responsibility to address. Unlike so many challenges of our time, this is one that money can solve. All it takes to give one person water for 20 years is $20!  We can build wells, treatment plants, irrigation systems and infrastructure. The social web has given us the tools to mobilize the planet, to focus global conversation and collaborate on a massive scale. We can fix this. We just need to make it a priority to do so.

Bloggers across the globe will unite today for Blog Action Day. As of this writing, participants include 4,896 blogs in 136 countries with 37,867,698 readers. The goal of this annual event is to raise awareness and incite discussion about important issues that affect us all. Having so many write about the same issue on the same day is an elegant and dramatic method of accomplishing this. Focus in the past has been placed on the environment and poverty. The issue this year is water.

The art of maximizing social activism and online fundraising for this issue has been mastered by charity:water. Although their simple mission (to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations) has attracted the attention of celebrities and the media, I’m more impressed by their outreach to individuals. They provide powerful web tools that make it ridiculously easy to for anyone to make a substantial difference. Most notably, the first Twestival (Twitter Festival, get it?) used social media to raise almost half a million dollars for them in 2009.

I’d like to highlight two Minnesota friends whose inspirational efforts have made a big difference. TV producer and photographer Erica Meyer gave up her 29th birthday to raise $10K for charity:water. She wound up bringing in $11,111 and making clean water a reality for 111 families in two communities in need. Not to mention the impact of putting the issue in front of countless others online.

Another tireless advocate for the cause is writer/editor Kevin Hendricks. A portion of the proceeds of his latest book, Addition by Adoption, raised more than $5,700 to build a well in Ethiopia. Previously he held a Bald Birthday Benefit to provide 30 people with clean water in the 30 days before his 30th birthday. He vowed to shave his head if the goal was achieved. It only took six days before he had to put the razor to work. A clean shave for clean water.

Kevin created the short video below which quite literally brought the issue home for me. In it, he carries five gallons of water (weighing 40 pounds) from the Mississippi River two miles to his house. African women walk over 40 billion hours each year carrying similar vessels to gather water, which is usually still not safe to drink.

In the time it takes for another child to die without clean water, you could take just a moment to spread the word:

• Tweet about Blog Action Day or retweet others, use the
• Read, share or comment on Blog Action Day posts from around the web (lists of featured and recent posts)
• Embed the Blog Action Day video on your blog
• Mention it in a Facebook status update
• Start a conversation about the issue with a coworker
• Bring it up with your family at the dinner table this evening

If you’d like to go further you can make even more of a difference.

• Sign the petition to support the UN’s efforts to bring clean, safe water to millions globally
• Fundraise for charity:water or donate to water.org
• Take time to learn more about this crisis and share what you learn

Thank you.

Starbucks is running a special promotion until January 2, 2009 to donate 5¢ for (STARBUCKS)RED beverages sold to the Global Fund to help save lives in Africa. Today, on World Aids Day, every hand-crafted beverage will generate a 5¢ donation.

Drop by your local Starbucks to support this important cause. Learn more at Starbucks.com.

“Free the child’s potential, and you will transform him into the world”
- Maria Montessori

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my daughters’ potential. The world they’ve entered seems to be constantly on the edge of crisis. The environmental, financial and political events of this past year alone have left me feeling uneasy about their future to say the least. I worry that their individual potential may be overshadowed by these larger forces.

I realize that they will have to learn to face these challenges, and many more, eventually. So I focus on teaching them some basic concepts to navigate with:

• Everything can teach us something
• Questions are important
• Everyone deserves compassion
• Believe in the power of an individual to affect change

I usually don’t pay much attention to the other factors affecting their potential. How many of us do? They eat regular meals, sleep in warm beds, receive any medical care they require and have access to formal education. They enjoy music and food from all over the world. They feel protected and loved.

They’re lucky. Of the 2.2 billion children in the world, 1 billion live in poverty. According to UNICEF, 26,500-30,000 children die each day due to poverty. They “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world.”

Blog Action Day is helping raise awareness of this crisis today. Thousands of bloggers are reaching out to a worldwide audience of millions to incite action. The internet has become the most powerful tool ever concieved to connect, share, learn, understand and unite. All this is meaningless if it just increases the divide between the connected and those most in need.

What can you do right now? Start by supporting organizations already working on the issue. A few suggestions:

• Kiva is a person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.
• Closer to home, Cheerful Givers is a Minnesota-based nonprofit providing toy-filled birthday gift bags to food shelves and shelters so that parents living in poverty can give their child a birthday gift.
• Change.org is a social network for people interested in a better world. They help translate interest in social change into effective action.
• The Blog Action Day site has lots more about what one person can do.

This is a problem we can solve. Together.