Ok, Thanksgiving isn’t for a while yet, but the Canadian Thanksgiving was last week, so I consider all this time in between to be a time to reflect on what we’ve been blessed with. And it’s a lot!

If you’re a work at home mom, you know how much time goes into building your business, spending time with your family and there is very little time leftover for anything else, right? Well, imagine if you had to spend hours every day just trying to get the very basics for your family? What if you couldn’t turn on a tap and get water instantly, but had to hike many miles to find water and then haul it back home again?

That’s the reality for millions of women around the world, yet they don’t even have access to clean water after all that trekking. Did you know that every 15 seconds a child dies from water related diseases?

In many 3rd world villages, the women need to be cultivating a garden for food. Some of them might have dreams of starting their own business, but when they are forced to spend the vast majority of their time on the very basic needs of their families, plus caring for their children who get sick from the unclean water, there’s not much time for anything else.

You might not be in the position you want to be. Maybe you only have one family car and your kids go to public school on the bus. But you have supermarkets full of food close by, running water . . . even internet! And best of all, you have time. Time to spend with your family, fulfill your dreams and make your business ideas into reality. That’s a HUGE privilege!

While being thankful for what you have is a great start, giving back is also a good idea. Often we can help people for less than a meal out with the kids would cost us. There are a number of ways you can make a huge difference in another woman’s life, but if you’re worried about money, here are a couple of ideas as to how you can raise some cash to help someone out.

• Challenge your family to eat like a 3rd world country for 1 week at dinner. Rather than having a full meal, sit down to beans and rice. Not only will you save money, you’ll also learn what it’s like to eat the same food each and every day. Remember that for many families, this would be the only meal of the day and would likely be made with contaminated water.
• Drink water for 7 days. Relish the fact that you have clean drinking water and skip the sodas, juices and other liquids for a week. Use the money you save to donate and help women elsewhere get the same access to clean water.
• Knock off the sweets. Avoid sugar for a week. It’s good for you and will give you a tiny taste of what it’s like to undergo deprivation. Again, the money saved can be used for aid.

I’m sure you can come up with more ideas. Post them in the comments!

Now, how do you actually help women get the water we take forgranted every day? Water.org has a program in place that costs $25. For that small amount of money, they can provide one person with clean, sustainable water for an entire lifetime. That’s pretty awesome. Imagine, if your life revolved around survival techniques like hiking 20 miles a day with a 40 gallon jerry can on your back, filling it with water and hauling it home again, what could you do with the time that would be freed up by having water made available to you? A LOT!

Even if you don’t have $25 to spare, you can still help. The Water site offers several ideas for anyone to help boost water availability to 3rd world women.

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