Today is Blog Action Day 2010, a day to unite bloggers worldwide and focus the conversation on one topic. This year the topic of conversation is water and how too many people worldwide do not have access to clean, safe drinking water.

Blog Action Day started in 2007 and has continued growing each year to include more and more bloggers that are in hundreds of different countries and blog about many many different topics. We are proud to participate for our 3rd year, and hope that we can help bring more light on this topic with our post today.

As a design studio, we blog about a multitude of design-related topics. We’re not necessarily taking a break from that today, but rather shifting the focus of the day to safe water and how we can help, as designers, and as a part of the population that CAN help.

The Problem

Millions of people every day rely on unsafe water sources, and according to an article from Blog Action Day, about 4,500 children die every day from this. They don’t have access to safe drinking water or clean sanitation facilities. Even more astonishing, more than 884 million people in the world rely on unsafe water sources, leaving them susceptible to sickness and death.

What We Can Do To Help

The issue is very preventable and we can help! These people only need access to clean drinking water, and there are tons of organizations working together to provide just that. Head on over to the Blog Action Day website to sign their petition to help the UN. The UN is working with UNICEF to supply clean water to the poorest world populations, which have been hit the hardest. They say they are on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal on water, but will only do so by continual education and hard work. Signing their petition will help them reach more people and keep working to fight this.

charity:water is another organization working hard to eradicate the world of this issue. They state on their site, “Unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of all disease and kill more people than all forms of violence, including war.” They’ve funded 2,906 water projects, in 17 countries. They ask for just $20 donations (which will provide 1 person clean water for 20 years), where 100% of the proceeds go straight to new clean water facilities for people in need.

Support Through Design

We’d love to do our part and show our support through design. At Snoack Studios we created the banner shown here to help spread the word and get people the help they need. Please feel free to take this banner (right click and save) and use it on your website, blog, email newsletter, etc to spread the word with us. We suggest you link it to either Blog Action Day’s Petition, charity:water, or another organization of your choice that is working toward the same goal so people know where they can take action and help. We’d love to hear your thoughts and comments below.