My name is Maya Kirschner. Next week, I will celebrate my Bat Mitzvah at Beth Am Israel. For my mitzvah project, I have been studying Water Justice and have been trying to help in the efforts to bring clean, safe drinking water to people in developing countries.

I would like to invite you to learn a bit about it and encourage you to get involved in my campaign.

I have never experienced real thirst. My water isn’t gross and it doesn’t make me or my family or people in my community sick. But 663 million people -nearly 1 in 10 people worldwide--live without clean water. Diseases from dirty water kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. 43% of those deaths are children under five years old.

The majority of people with dirty and unsafe water live in isolated areas and spend hours every day walking to collect water for their family. In Africa alone, women spend 40 billion hours a year walking for water.3 4 In many places, girls my age and even younger don’t get to go to school because they must walk for hours a day to fetch water for their families.

I discovered that access to clean water and basic sanitation can save around 16,000 lives every week.2 Clean water means education, income and health - especially for women and kids. It gives communities more time to grow food, earn an income, and go to school -- all of which fight poverty.

For my Bat Mitzvah project, I am raising funds for Charity Water, a non-profit organization that brings clean drinking water to people in developing countries. Charity Water supports systems like drilled wells, spring protections and BioSand filters, which help provide clean water to communities around the world.
I placed a 5 gallon “Jerry Can” filled with water in the lobby. It weighs 40 pounds. If you’re at Beth Am, please pick it up and imagine hauling it for miles like some 11 year old girls have to do.

Also, please consider donating to my “Water Walk” campaign -- anything you can give is a huge help.

100% of the money will be used to build clean water projects. When they’re complete, charity: water will send us photos and GPS coordinates so we can see the exact community we helped.

Let’s fix this problem together, drop by drop.

You can support the campaign by clicking here.

Thank you,
-Maya Kirschner