Safe Water is the project we run ourselves. There is no gap between your donation and a pump going into the ground in rural Bangladesh.
A simple, low-maintenance pump installed close to where families live. Cuts hours off the daily walk for water and serves a cluster of households for years.
A community well built to last. Where surface water is unreliable or unsafe, a deep bore reaches clean water further underground, enough for a whole village.
“Whoever digs a well will receive reward as long as any living creature drinks from it”
These are real WHO access thresholds and measured water-use figures. The classification changes at the boundaries below, mirroring how the evidence is structured.
The World Health Organization classifies water-related disease into five mechanisms. A pump does not just give people something to drink, it interrupts most of these at once.
Caused by drinking contaminated water: water-borne disease, infectious hepatitis.
Caused by not having enough water for hygiene. Trachoma, scabies, dysentery.
Pathogens that spend part of their life cycle in water. Leptospirosis, cyanobacteria toxins.
Insects that breed near water sources. Malaria, onchocerciasis.
From engineered water systems themselves. Legionellosis, certain pipe contaminants.
Source: WHO 2020, Table 1 (adapted from Bartram & Hunter, 2015; originally White, Bradley & White, 1972).
Reductions in childhood water-borne disease found in rigorous, randomised or well-controlled studies, pooled across systematic reviews.
All figures: WHO 2020, Table 8, reductions in water-borne disease morbidity, restricted to the more methodologically rigorous study subset where reported. A water project usually combines several of these at once, so the effects are not simply additive.
Researchers tracked childhood water-borne illness against the density of tubewells within 100m of each home from 2000 to 2006. Every step up in nearby well density was associated with meaningfully less disease, and the effect held after controlling for wealth, flooding and education.
It is one of the largest, longest-running datasets connecting well access to child health outcomes.
£250 funds a hand pump. £750 funds a well. Both are built, sited and maintained with the community that will use them every day.
