One fifth of all the fresh water on the planet is in the Amazon. However, despite the fact that there is the greatest water regenerationseven out of ten inhabitants do not have access to drinking water.

From World Vision they have launched the Amazon Basin Initiative campaign, focused on boys and girls to ensure resilience to climate change and contribute to sustainable livelihoods for children and their families.

Specifically, it aims to reach 10 million boys and girls in the next seven years in six countries that share the Amazon River and its tributaries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela.

The truth is that currently in order to obtain drinking water, many families must travel long distances and, in addition, they have to pay for it. In this way, they usually pay three dollars per gallon, almost four liters. An overpriced luxury.

A situation caused by extractive industries, which have polluted the water without sufficient purification systems to reverse the situation. Communities have been forced to migrate inland, where conditions are even worse.

“There are communities where there is not even a well to extract drinking water,” explains Mishelle Mitchell, of World Vision Latin America.

Few of them have seen a faucet or a simple bath up close. Because they don’t have, they don’t even have a sewage system. In the end, almost seven out of ten communities have chosen to cook with contaminated water, which seriously affects their health.

“If it is not clean water and it is consumed, it can cause quite severe illnesses. In the case of children it can lead to death,” stresses Mishelle Mitchell. Thirty million people live in the Amazon basin, ten million of them are boys and girls, the most vulnerable.