SHUTTERSTOCK + charity: water
The Shutterstock community is renowned for its creativity – from our subscribers, who use our imagery and footage to convey messages and tell stories, to our base of talented submitters who created the work you see above – we represent individuals worldwide who bring ideas to life.
The creative spirit lies at the heart of our partnership with charity: water. Since January 2010, Shutterstock has made a lasting difference in the lives of hundreds of people in the Amhara region of Northern Ethiopia by providing the life-changing gift of clean, safe drinking water through a series of funded water projects.
These water projects can help the lives of men such as Muche Alemu, who no longer have to experience the pain of watching family members, including his own daughter, die from waterborne diseases, which claim the lives of 4,500 children on average worldwide each day. Before Shutterstock’s well came to Alemu’s village of Casie Chibechiba, he and his family had to walk for hours to a stagnant, murky pond to collect drinking water.
“Water was always our biggest fear because it made our village sick, and there was nothing we could do,” said Alemu. “But now, I do not worry anymore. We have no more sickness from water, no more children dying because they cannot find clean water to drink.” Alemu’s story is the result of Shutterstock’s partnership with charity: water, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries. To date, Shutterstock’s wells have helped approximately 1,500 people like Alemu in villages throughout Ethiopia.