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New York Spring Water, Inc. is an organization committed to sharing its resources with suffering people.

Our product is pure water. . .something most of us take for granted. We make it available for our customers as a convenience and as a benefit to good health. Many of the world’s population, however, have to walk long distances and carry water back to their homes in containers. Even this water may be unsanitary. It seemed logical that we should do what we can to help alleviate this problem.

Font of Mercy was created to manage the contributions going to organizations which will do the hands-on work of drilling wells and building of potable water systems in developing countries. A portion of the sale of each bottle of New York Spring Water, Inc. products will go to Font of Mercy to fund these humanitarian projects.

Worldwide Water Stress

Already about one-third of the world’s population lives in countries suffering from moderate-to-high water stress, according to the most recent Global Environment Outlook (GEO-3) report. Water stress is defined as areas where water consumption is more than 10 percent of renewable freshwater resources.

The GEO-3 scientists project that more than half the people in the world could be living in severely water-stressed areas by 2032.

Dying for Water

When access to water is within one kilometer (0.62 miles) of a dwelling, meaning it would take about 30 minutes a day to collect water, the average consumption is 20 liters (5 gallons) per day per person, according to a 2003 joint report by the World Health Organization and UNICEF. In homes with multiple taps, the average daily consumption is 100 to 200 liters (roughly 25 to 50 gallons) per person.

If the water source is farther than one kilometer, per capita consumption drops to around five liters (a little more than a gallon) per day, if that.

With so little water, basic hygiene is frequently compromised. The report estimates that households getting water from taps may use 30 times more water for child hygiene compared with those who have to collect water from a communal source. This brings the added burden of illness to families already living in poverty. Infectious waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid, and cholera are responsible for 80 percent of illnesses and deaths in the developing world, many of them children. One child dies every eight seconds from a waterborne disease; 15 million children a year.

Source: World Health Organization
Learn more about the worldwide water crisis, visit www.who.org (World Health Organization) or www.twas.org (The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World).