I am an average 16 year old girl, living a very forunate, very underrated life of the typical American teenager in the state of Kentucky. I look around, and I just see how the other average people around me live. "Boring"- that's how I described our lives. The word "average" never excited me. I assumed our ideas of average were the same, all around the world. I thought that since I was average, and that my biggest point of interest was what new iPhone was coming out, or if Snooki was going to get punched in the face on Jersey Shore again, then the rest of the world's "average" people must have points of interest that were very similar.

I never realized that my shallow interests were so small, so insignificant. I never knew that some 16 year old girl in Africa's biggest priority would be to stay alive. To keep her family alive. To get just 1 drink of water, because she's gone so long without something real to drink that she and her younger siblings, her family, her friends, most of the people around her could die.

I now know, the idea of average is not the same all over the world. In so many- too many places, the idea of average is a child who's thirsting to death. The idea of average is a person being forced to drink contaminated water- sewage, just to stay alive that much longer. The idea of average is not being able to take a bath once a today, let alone weeks at a time. The idea of average is a family who can't grow the resources they need for food, and are forced to grow industrial resources as useless as roses, thus wasting water. The idea- no, the reality is, their water is equivalent to our value of gold.

How many of us have danced around our kitchens because we have gotten a tall glass of cold water in the morning when our throat was dry? How many of us have drank out of a waterfountain at school, savoring it because we didn't know if that would be the only real drink we'd have for days at a time? Anyone? Please, if that's been you, raise your hand. The truth is- no hands should be up. No one does that, that's the reality. Most of us don't give a single thought to having a drink when you're a little thirsty. Most of us don't even think it a big thing to be able to water your gardens with clean water. Most of us take it all for granted.

Somewhere, right now in a developing country, a 3rd world country, there's someone who would dance at the chance for a drink. There's someone who would savor that drink like it's the last they're ever going to have.

This all hit me when my mother, who is obsessed with watching random documentaries on Netflix had me sit down and have a documentary marathon with her. I rolled my eyes, and plopped on the couch. I took a sip of the tall glass of lemonade I have just finished making, as my mom put on the 2nd documentary of the day, "Blue Gold". It told me all this information about how we're all slowly losing our drinkable water, what we can do to stop it, and how it's effecting those like the 16 year girl in Africa, thirsting to death. That 16 year old girl- the one that's just like me. It told me that every 15 seconds, a child dies because of a lack of drinking water. Do the math, friends. That's over 5,000 children per day, nearly 2 million per year.

This my inspiration for this project. Just a couple thousand dollars could save a village of people from dying of thirst. Just one well could change so many people's lives.

All I'm asking is for simple things. I just want your time, to elaborate on how serious all of this is. I just want you to consider if a couple dollars out of your pocket is worth the lives of an entire village in a parched country.

 If any of this has gone through to you at all, and you want to find out how you can help me save some lives, or just more general information about what's going on with the "water crisis", my contact information is as follows.

E-mail: [email protected]

Add me on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000092025700

Phone: Home: (502)-549-3028 OR Cell: (502)-460-3087