Water, Education, Health and Sanitation

WATER

Water is life. We drink it. We wash our hands and cook our food in
it. Access to safe water lets us be healthy and productive. There
is presently enough water to meet everyone's needs.

yet

• over
  1.1 billion poor people are denied access to clean water.
• over 4,000
  children die each day from diarrhea caused by dirty water.
• Women and
  girls in poor countries walk on average six kilometers a day, carrying 20
  litres of water.
• In July,
  2007 Health Canada
  warned over ninety First Nations communities not to drink their tap
  water.

Let's open the taps to clean water for all.

EDUCATION

Everyone has the right to an education. An education is crucial to
break the cycle of poverty. It is a catalyst for progress in virtually every
area of human development.

yet

• in many poor
  countries, parents must pay for school.
• forced to
  choose, poor families tend to pick sons before daughters
• over 80
  million children, mostly girls, are not in school.
• the average
  16-year-old girl in Africa has received
  less than three years of schooling.
• two million
  more teachers are needed to ensure public education for
  all.

Let's open classrooms for all children.

HEALTH

Health care is a human
right. Good health begins with adequate care during pregnancy and childbirth.
And we all need access to a doctor or nurse when we get sick.

yet

• in the
  poorest countries, only half of women giving birth get help from a trained
  health care worker.
• each day
  1,400 women die needlessly in pregnancy and childbirth.
• poor
  countries need over four million more health care workers
• Aboriginal
  people have more health problems and live shorter lives than Canadians as
  a whole.

Let's open the door to quality health care for all.

SANITATION

Sanitation -- flushing toilets, or other forms of sewage treatment --
is essential to our health and well-being. The British Medical Journal
calls public sanitation the biggest health advance in the past 100 years.

yet

• almost
  half the world has no access to proper sanitation.
• millions
  of children in the global South miss school due to water-related
  illnesses.
• dirty
  water kills over three million people a year.
• millions
  of girls do not attend school because there aren't suitable sanitation
  facilities.

Let's open decent sanitation facilities for all.