There are dozens of statistics on the water crisis. 800 million people in the world without access to clean, safe drinking water. 40 billion hours every year spent walking for water, in Africa alone. More than 4,000 child deaths each day from water related illnesses.

But it’s that last one that really resonates with me. That’s one child lost every 19 seconds.

Living in Togo, West Africa, I put names and faces to these statistics. In Nyassivé, I experienced both the joys and the challenges of life in my remote rural community - one without electricity or running water, with minimal access to health care and certainly very few preventative health care measures in place. I witnessed births and deaths. I smiled, laughed, danced and celebrated along with my community. But together, we also struggled, mourned, and lost.

The morning I encountered Beauga’s father at the taxi station en route back to the village, I expected nothing less than the routine upbeat responses as I worked my way through the ritual Ewe greetings - inquiring about the house, the work, the family and the children. But his final reply strayed from the usual script.

“Beauga, il est mort,” he said with a pain and sadness in his voice.

It took a minute to process, to work through the details. And then my heart just broke.

Beauga - the chubby, happy baby who tipped the scales every month at our baby-weighing program, the little boy who had been strapped to his mother’s back since our first meeting, whose curly little head I gave a pat to every time we went through our ritual salutations, whose mother beamed proudly every time I asked about him - was dead.

I don’t know the exact cause of Beauga’s death, but I do know that the deep pain and heartache in his mother’s eyes, when I sat down at the family’s house to offer my condolences, was indescribable.

Every 19 seconds, a mother like Beauga’s loses a child due to a water-related illness. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We have solutions that can change this. We can reduce this number to zero.

Every day, charity: water is bringing us closer. To date, they have constructed more than 6,000 clean water projects around the world, serving more than 2.5 million people...and counting.

I am honored to be a part of their mission. I believe my birthday can change the world!

Join me.

(photo above: Baby Jeremy)