On the 18th March 2015, ISTS colleagues across the globe are walking 4 miles carrying 5 litres of water. This is the typical distance someone - usually women or children - in the developing world have to walk to get safe, drinking water.  Unlike our scenic route, however, they  have to walk on a dirty road under the blazing sun carrying up to 20 litres of water in a jerry can.  This is something they have to endure every day for several hours.  

You and I cannot even imagine what this might feel like.  But for many walking for hours every morning to fetch clean water from a well is a painful reality.  Ant its not over once they get there as they have to wait patiently in a queue, sometimes for a few hours.

Without safe water or sanitation, people are trapped n a cycle of poverty and disease. Across the developing world, millions of women are wasting precious time collecting dirty water, children are dying from preventable diarrhoeal diseases, and communities have open sewers running through them.  When they are feeling too poorly or tired to face this walk, they have no alternative but to draw water from a dirty pond near their village.