This year I donated my birthday to charity. I don't want gifts, or money, or a party. I just want people to pay attention to a problem: the water crisis.

Projects like these are so important to me and should be important to everyone. We already know that women are an untapped resource in the third world and that empowering them and allowing them to make choices can create huge strides forward in the economic potential of a poor nation (The Girl Effect).

But simple things prevent women from utilising their potential, including a lack of access to clean drinking water. Did you know women have to take hours out of their day just to fetch a small amount of unclean water for their family to share? That's time they could be in school or working, but instead they spend it walking in dangerous places carrying forty pounds of water on a hot day.

They may also spend it mourning over their dead child who contracted a water-related disease. You would not let your children drink the water theirs must drink, but our children should not get special privilege as if their worth is higher. No family should have to be frightened that their child may die before the age of five because their water is unfit for consumption.

Please donate and help 10 families find access to clean water. That's over 50 people, many of them women and children. We can make their lives better and help open the flood gate for their potential by ensuring they have access to a basic necessity that most of us take for granted.