At Manyonje Primary School, over 1,000 bright young students and 30 dedicated teachers are reaching for a better future, so much so that they’ve launched a secondary school to keep their momentum going. But their dream is at a standstill. Without access to clean water, growth isn’t just difficult — it’s impossible. The promise of education, health, and hope is hanging in the balance.

There are 1,000 day students, 415 boarding students, and 64 staff members at Isanjiro Primary School who do not have access to safe, sufficient water to meet their daily needs. The school has access to piped water and a community spring, but both options provide more problems than solutions.

The Navajo Nation covers 27,413 rural square miles across Northern Arizona, Northwest New Mexico, and Southern Utah. It is home to 173,667 out of 332,129 Navajo tribal members. 30% of the households here do not have running water or basic plumbing.

The 515 students at St. Gerald Sasala Primary School spend too much of their day collecting and carrying water instead of learning.

Finding sufficient water to meet the daily water needs of the 415 students and 17 teachers at Masungutsa Primary School is a constant struggle. And no matter how hard students work to collect water, the water they bring from home or draw from different sources is making everyone ill.

The 665 students of Muchanja Primary School in Western Kenya have no water source on their campus, leaving them without reliable water to meet their daily needs.

The Appalachia Water Project is centered in McDowell County, West Virginia, where over a third of the population lives below the poverty line.