By Paul Maziar
As World Water Day approaches on March 22, four-time Grammy-Award-winning musician Lenny Kravitz has teamed up with UNICEF to help raise awareness about the supreme importance of clean water and adequate sanitation. It is a harrowing fact that nearly 900 million people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water, and with the modern implementation of social networking, influential spokespeople like Kravitz are doing their part to spread the word through viral social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.
“Water is the essence of life — it all begins with water,” says Kravitz. “And at the very least, everybody in the world should have access to clean water. To be able to drink, to be able to clean themselves, have proper hygiene.” His plan is to utilize these social networking outlets to launch a series of public service announcements, with the hope that they will go viral.
In this endeavor, UNICEF’s Tap Project and Kravitz will be asking for a $1 donation for each glass of tap water you drink from March 19 – 25, during World Water Week. As the Tap Project website explains, every donated dollar can help provide a child with safe water for 40 days.
According to UNICEF figures, approximately 4,000 children die of water-related diseases every day. Safe water not only quenches thirst, but it also prevents debilitating diseases like blinding trachoma, an infectious eye disease which has become the world’s leading cause of preventable blindness. It also prevents life-threatening waterborne diseases that cause approximately 1.8 million deaths each year.
Since 1990, UNICEF has helped more than 2 billion people gain access to improved drinking water sources and 1.8 billion people gain access to improved sanitation facilities.
“For 780 million people, water is a luxury,” Kravitz says in his first announcement. “It’s a human right.” To learn more about the Tap Project, where the donated money goes and how you can volunteer, visit http://www.tapproject.org/.