Imagine if you had no clean water. Imagine sweating and straining to haul contaminated water back to your family. Imagine suffering from preventable illnesses like worms, dysentery or other diarrheal diseases.

Last summer, my town of Jacksonville experienced several inches of rain within a period of just a few hours. The creek the flows through town overflowed, causing flash flooding. The aunt and uncle both lost their home, along with many others. The flooding also affected the water treatment plant, and the city was without treated water for over three weeks. During this time, water still flowed but had to be boiled before using it for anything, including bathing. While this was a pain, it opened up my eyes to how spoiled we as Americans are. Every day, we go turn on the faucet and clean, safe water flows out. The average American family uses over 400 gallons of water per day. Over one billion people on this planet cannot do this and are dying because of it. As the richest country in the world, we should definitely help.