For many young people, water is a life and death issue. Over 10,000 children die every year from diarrhea because they don’t have access to clean water. Most of those are children under five years old. Things as simple as clean water for restrooms, hand washing, and drinking could reduce water-related deaths and give young people more time to be a kid, spend time with family, and attend school.

Students around the world learned the importance of clean water. Students learned that often women and girls carry the water (weighing nearly 44 pounds!) each day on their backs. Our teams also learned that water is too expensive to buy for families living on $1 a day, and that more than half the hospital beds in the world are occupied by people sick from water related illnesses.

The efforts of students worldwide helped support the build of 57 clean water projects and provide nearly 19,000 Tanzanians with access to clean, safe drinking water.

We set a goal to receiving 323,460 handmade beads. Your efforts blew past our goal; we received over 800,000 beads and unlocked $500,000 in funding to charity: water from the Bezos Family Foundation.