LifeStraw Water Filtration

It's a fact: America alone spends billions on bottled water every year -- when it's readily available at the tap, virtually free -- while over one billion people lack clean water, and 5 million people die every year from waterborne illnesses. Plus, it's estimated that 50% of all hospitalizations globally are caused by waterborne illnesses!

GIFT is aligning the Church with LifeStraw water filtration to address the lack of clean drinking water. GIFT has already brought LifeStraw Family Filters into Ethiopia/Sudan and Guatemala. GIFT works with both Catholic rectories and grass-roots Christian ministries to deliver these vital tools into needy communities. In Ethiopia, LifeStraw Family Filters turned horribly filthy, very unhealthy water -- water tainted by cows with bacteria bathing and by human bathing and waste -- into water as clean as we get from bottled water. WOW!

The filters brought tears to Sudanese recipients now living in Ethiopia. Plus, Sudanese refugees now residing in America have indicated their relatives back home fear the impure water as much as they fear the militias who have inflicted the worst of inhumanity upon them. After seeing our video of the purification results, they are enthusiastically endorsing this solution and hoping others will join them in supporting this effort.

By simply reallocating the amount we spend on bottled water each year -- or the amount we spend on overall beverage consumption -- we could easily fund enough LifeStraw filtration to virtually eradicate the problem of impure drinking water.

Lifestraw makes both Personal filtration tubes for individual water consumption and Family filters for purifying home water supply.

One LifeStraw Personal tube will provide a full year of pure drinking water for an adult -- or two years for a child. A Lifestraw Family filtration device will filter 12,000 litres of water -- providing safe drinking water for a family of 5 for 1.5 years (calculated approximately on a family's consumption of about 20 litres per day).

These are radical but proven innovations that treat water at the point of use vs. the source. (Gizmag recently named LifeStraw the innovation of the century.)

You can fund a LifeStraw Personal tube or Family filtration system in our GIFT Shop Donation Link.

Through our LifeStraw project, GIFT helps people fulfill on the admonition in the Parable of the Sheep & Goats that we help meet needs of those who are lacking. Jesus explained that we'll be judged, in part, by whether we loved others, including whether we provided a drink of water to those who were thirsty and relief to those who were sick:

"When the Son of Man comes in His glory, He will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the Sheep from the Goats. He will put the Sheep on his right and the Goats on His left. Then the King will say to those on his right, Come take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world, for I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink... I was sick and you looked after me.'" Mt 25:31-46 NIV

You can provide funding for a Personal filter for just $8.00 inclusive of shipping, handling and customs. Or, for $10 you can buy a share in a Lifestraw Family filter, which will provide pure water for a person for a year.

If you'd like to provide life-transforming water and spiritual witness, please make a donation via our GIFT Shop Donation section. Or call 877-WEGIFT2 (877-934-4382) to make your donation.

Tor Kuet, Executive Director, Southern Sudan Community Association, receives the first of many LifeStraw Family filters that GIFT is directing into Sudan. Tor will be working with a member of the Sudanese government, his orphanage and others to begin a long-term project of water purification, irrigation pumps and ultimately malaria nets -- all initiated and provided by GIFT.