20 liters

There are simple little pleasures in life that I know we take for granted.  A roof over our head.  Four walls surrounding us.  Heat.  Clean water.  Food.  Shoes and clothes.  I know that there are so many that go without.  Not just without nice things, but necessary things.  It's been laid on my heart to want to do something to help.  And with two small children I really feel like there isn't a lot that I can GO and do.  But I know that there are a lot of good causes that I can put my energies towards and help out in that way.

As I've said before I've decided to run a marathon and a 25K this year.  And incidentally the two races all within the same week.  Which is in May! So, I decided to take that opportunity and use it for good.  Not only for personal achievement, but to help out.  The organization that I've chosen to fundraise for is called 20 liters.  They say that the average person needs 20 liters of water a day to survive.  This organization builds sand water filters in Rwanda.  And of course that takes money.

My thought was that I could have people support or sponsor my running.  I figured people could either sponsor through a dollar amount per mile or just donate whatever they feel led too.  This way it raises awareness about this easily fixed problem, and it lets the people I care about know what I'm doing in my life.  I feel very passionately about this cause because it is something that can be easily remedied.

The campaign I've started is at http://20liters.org/profile/julie-vangyseghem/.  Here you can check out my profile and how much money I want to raise, how far we've come, and what we still need to do to make our goal.  It breaks down the individual goals of how much things cost and how easy it could be to give a village clean water.  I'm very excited to be apart of this bigger picture and I hope that you will join with me to fight this cause!

It's ironic that I chose this because the other day we were giving Tristan a bath and while we were filling it up the water looked a little murky.  After we filled it up a little way it looked really dirty.  Mortified that he was sitting in this dirty water (which was supposed to be cleaning him) we got him out and ran the water some more.  It was all rusty and it had a bit of a smell to it.  YUCK.  I went over to the neighbors to see if their water was doing that and they said every now and again the city water just sits for too long and gets this sediment build-up and if we just ran the water long enough it would clear out and go away.  So we did and the problem did resolve itself.  I just couldn't imagine letting my child bath in that water, let alone drink it and there are millions of children all over the world that drink dirtier water than that.  We are extremely blessed that we can just turn on a faucet, drink the water and even have different temperatures to it.  That we don't have to walk miles to get water that might not even be clean.  It was a real eye opener.

If this breaks your heart, you have those emotions for a reason.  Get angry about it, and then do something about it.  You can help!   Join with me to fight for clean water all around the world.

JVG