For World Water Day ...

This video from China Central Television's America service tells the story of Nicaraguan communities that, with the help of foreign non-governmental organizations, are building their own wells and catchment systems to ensure access to clean water.

In poor countries where increasing human population and sometimes drought dry up once more abundant water sources, access to water especially burdens the life chances of women: women become, literally, the essential haulers of water and little more.

The clip features the projects of El Porvenir, the US-founded NGO with which I had the privilege to travel in 2007. That year, we visited the tiny hamlet of Cerritos, kilometers off any paved road, where foreign help had enabled the community to build sanitary latrines. Folks threw quite a celebration for the new facilities.

This news story shows Cerritos seven years later finally completing a clean water supply of their own.