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World Water Day 2014: Crucial Water Programs Allowing Forgotten People to See That God Cares

Forgotten people in developing countries around the world are being shown that God does care about them, due largely to the work of nonprofit organizations dedicated to providing life-saving clean drinking water to the 768 million people who still lack access to this necessity.

"When you take a remote community that doesn't show up on any of the maps, and the government may or may not know where that community is – you can find it on Google Earth only if you know exactly where to look – it's very easy for the people in these communities to feel like they've been forgotten," Mary Kay Jackson, a missionary with The Mission Society and the managing director of Pure Home Water, shared with The Christian Post in a phone interview on Thursday.

"When I can go in with the water filters, they come to me and say, 'Thank you so much Mary for bringing the filters.' And I say 'Don't thank me, it was Jesus who brought the filters.'"

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Saturday marks World Water Day 2014, though activities began on Friday. While many faith-based and secular groups have contributed greatly to providing hundreds of millions of people in developing countries with clean drinking water through various purification programs, there are still close to 768 million people, or 10 percent of the human population, who lack this necessity.

Jackson's Pure Home Water has been in existence since 2005, working primarily in villages in Ghana that are in need of fresh drinking water. The nonprofit group manufactures ceramic pot water filters, made by local materials such as terra cotta clay and rice husks, which Jackson told CP look similar to flower pots.

In the past seven years, The Mission Society and Pure Home Water have provided 20,000 of these filters to close to 100,000 people in regions needing clean water. Besides saving lives, the water projects also support the local economy with the hiring of local workers, who are in turn able to pay school fees for their children and provide better opportunities for their entire families.

"Most of the women who work for us would have been the traditional potters of those communities, and they were making a small amount of money for what is actually a highly skilled job," the managing director explained.

While 71.2 percent of Ghana's population is said to be Christian, according to the CIA World Factbook, Jackson shared that most of the communities they have reached were Muslim or followed traditional beliefs.

"We have not had any pushback on that, we have not had any negative reaction," she commented.

"We're doing this because Jesus loves these communities, and we're bringing living water as well as physical water."

To the people in isolated regions who feel forgotten by the rest of the world, Jackson offers: "I'm sure you feel forgotten many times, and I wouldn't know where your community was, but because Jesus loves me, I love you. And He has put donors in the U.S. and organizations here in Ghana together [so] we can come to your community and bring clean water, because God has heard your prayers and is answering them."

She said that this provides great encouragement and a real testimony to the people.

"They start to see the power of a God who cares about them as individuals."

Pure Home Water has made it its goal to provide clean drinking water to all 1 million people in Ghana who lack clean water by 2020. As for the global effort to bring safe water to all people in need, Jackson offered that organizations have been helping hundreds of millions, but there is still a lot of work to be done, particularly in helping those in the most remote corners of the world.

"There is a concentrated effort around the world, both in Christian development and the secular humanitarian arena, to bring safe water. It is something that is very easy to grasp for those in the West, we easily understand that waterborne diseases are preventable," the missionary said.

Jackson noted that when she started work for Pure Home Water in 2006, there were 1.1 billion people in the world without access to safe water. In the past eight years or so, that number has been reduced by 20-25 percent.

"Getting water to the last 10 percent is going to be the most difficult because they are the people in the most remote areas, in the poorest parts of the world, where they may be in some hidden mountain valley that nobody ever goes to, or a remote jungle in the center of Africa that people never go, so finding them and reaching them is a very difficult task," the managing director reflected.

The Mission Society and Pure Home Water are encouraging Christians to purchase a $25 dollar filter in observance of World Water Day, which can greatly help an entire family in Ghana.

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