Jimmy Donaldson’s eyes, more famous in the world with more than 424 million subscribers, known as, have been put on La Guajira, one of the departments with the greatest difficulties of access to drinking water, in northern Colombia. It is one of the places in different continents where it will arrive Team Wateran initiative that brings together 3,000 content creators in the goal of raising 40 million dollars to bring clean water to two million people. In two weeks, the promotional has reached 58 million visits, a sample of how the digital plane is transforming the way of moving actions with social impact. “It is resignifying the way organizations make visible work, results and how the number of people willing to commit to solutions is expanded,” explains Candelaria Lucero dente, director in Colombia of Wateraidthe Allied International Organization to execute the resources.
The initiative, which will mainly cover countries in Africa and Asia, includes in South America to Colombia and Brazil. To, with about a million inhabitants and where almost seven out of 10 people in rural areas, especially of the indigenous communities, do not have access to safe water sources, is a new boost to the effort of various organizations. “La Guajira suffers four times more of acute diarrheal disease and malnutrition with respect to the rest of Colombia due to the lack of drinking water,” says Lucero. In this year, 111 children under five have died throughout the country for these diseases, 25 of them in La Guajira, according to data from the National Health Institute.
The challenge is of such magnitude that the union of different sectors and governments has demanded. In that of the President, he has even meant an exception in the tense relations with business powers. This joint will is reflected in La Guajira mission, a public-private alliance that leads the Aval Group and the Promigas company. “For the first time, more than 13,000 people in 52 Wayúu communities have the opportunity to open the key and find clean water. We have achieved it in a year and a half, rehabilitating 39 wells, drilling new and building more than 20 water treatment plants,” says María Lorena Gutiérrez, president of the financial conglomerate.
Wateraid It has been bringing solutions to these territories almost a decade. The support of the youtubers It will allow more settlers to reach, who walk for hours to load water to their guards. The video of the campaign shows a community that built a water source with bicycle spare parts and will now have a filtration system to ensure the quality of the liquid. With Team Water funds, they expect to reach 10,000 guajiros in the next five years, with connections with pipes, wells fed with solar energy or storage tanks, among others. The training of the premises is also contemplated, something that is fundamental. “The problem is not solved only with infrastructure, but requires long -term commitments. Sustainability is achieved when there is state commitment and when we involve communities in operation and care,” says the director of Wateraid In Colombia.
A few days after the closure of the campaign, Mrbeast, 27, along with his ally Mark Rober, a NASA exingeniero turned into a popular science youtuber, and other Internet celebrities that total more than 3,000 million followers, have managed to raise 30.4 million dollars. “A dollar will take clean water to a person for a year,” they promote. In two previous collective financing campaigns, funds raised to plant 20 million trees and to extract more than 13,000 tons of ocean garbage.
Now they aim to reduce a statistic that still shuds: one in 10 people in the world does not have access to drinking water. In Colombia, according to the Commission for Regulation of Drinking Water and Basic Sanitation, 13.8 million inhabitants – a quarter of the population – do not have water sources suitable for consumption. “It’s a great feeling to see someone drink clean water. Imagine that multiplied by two million,” says one of the spokesmen of Wateraid In another of the videos disseminated.
