Several years ago, while on a short-term micro-finance mission trip to Honduras, the Thirsty Child founder and a few volunteer team members became alarmed by the enormous human suffering related to unsafe water. This suffering was most profound, of course, among children. At that time, Honduras was still reeling from the devastating impact of Hurricane Mitch, as well as years of difficulties related to poverty, gangs, and corruption.

While the primary focus of our visit was providing Microfinance lending, it became apparent that the misery related to this clean water crisis required urgent attention. Our first reaction was to provide short-term community medical clinics (usually working out of a small neighborhood church), and to dispense medicine and other medical care to help address the medical needs of children who were suffering from unsafe water. Many of the local children were experiencing daily diarrhea and any number of water-related illnesses including Typhoid Fever, Cholera Giardi, Dysentery and others.

The lives of the people we encountered were being significantly impacted by their lack of access to clean, safe water, and the consequences of this problem could be observed in their health, education, and economic status.

While our short-term solutions were helpful and urgently needed, we (like many other well-intended short-term mission volunteers) got back on our airplane after a week of service and returned home. The people we helped were provided short-term relief, but would be suffering again soon.

What made this problem even more heart wrenching was that this suffering was completely avoidable with relatively small investments.

We determined at that point that our faith called us to provide a more sustainable set of solutions that addressed the root cause. We began to partner with our Honduran partner, the CareLink Foundation, to provide free Sawyer water filters to families in need, helping thousands of people.

Now we have expanded our reach into other parts of the globe, and through our partners, we have developed a more sophisticated set of solutions from simple filter kits (costing approximately $75.) to high-end five-figure water filter and sanitation projects and wells, providing the gift of safe water to small communities in developing countries.