Water.org is a nonprofit organization that provides access to safe water and sanitation. The organization has transformed hundreds of communities in Africa, South Asia, and Central America.

Founded in 2009, and based in Kansas City, Missouri, water.org describes the issues it is addressing, and its goals this way:

The water and sanitation problem in the developing world is far too big for charity alone, says water.org’s website.  Our vision: Safe water and the dignity of a toilet for all, in our lifetime.

Here are some facts about the worldwide water crisis:

More than 3.4 million people die each year from water, sanitation, and hygiene-related causes. Nearly all deaths, 99 percent, occur in the developing world.

Lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills children at a rate equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every four hours.

Of the 60 million people added to the world’s towns and cities every year, most move to informal settlements (i.e. slums) with no sanitation facilities.

780 million people lack access to an improved water source; approximately one in nine people.

“[The water and sanitation] crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.”

An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than the average person in a developing country slum uses for an entire day.

Over 2.5X more people lack water than live in the United States.

More people have a mobile phone than a toilet.

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Reporters Without Borders was founded in Montpellier (France) in 1985 by four journalists. The non-profit organization describes its missions as:

• To continuously monitor attacks on freedom of information worldwide;
• To denounce any such attacks in the media;
• To act in cooperation with governments to fight censorship and laws aimed at restricting freedom of information;
• To morally and financially assist persecuted journalists, as well as their families.
• To offer material assistance to war correspondents in order to enhance their safety.inancial and psychological assistance to journalists assigned to dangerous areas.

The organization’s purpose arises from this statement of principles:

Freedom of expression and of information will always be the world’s most important freedom. If journalists were not free to report the facts, denounce abuses and alert the public, how would we resist the problem of children-soldiers, defend women’s rights, or preserve our environment? In some countries, torturers stop their atrocious deeds as soon as they are mentioned in the media. In others, corrupt politicians abandon their illegal habits when investigative journalists publish compromising details about their activities. Still elsewhere, massacres are prevented when the international media focuses its attention and cameras on events.

Freedom of information is the foundation of any democracy. Yet almost half of the world’s population is still denied it.

Reporters Without Borders’ activities are carried out on five continents through its network of over 150 correspondents, its national sections, and its close collaboration with local and regional press freedom groups. Reporters Without Borders currently has 10 offices and sections worldwide.

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“To innovate and change, we need to know what’s broken and how it needs to be fixed,” says the Solutions Journalism Network website. “The media does a good job of covering the problems: In fact, most hard news reporting is about problems and crises. That kind of reporting is essential. But we believe it’s time for journalists to get used to covering the other half of the story. Not just risks, but opportunities. And not just problems, but solutions, too. Solution journalism is a way of reporting that helps society learn how to fix itself.
It’s not advocacy, or fluff, or good news. Solution journalism is about stories that investigate the question: Who is solving what, and how?”

Founded in 2013, in New York City, Solutions Journalism Network encourages journalists and news organizations to report on responses to social problems, not just on the problems themselves. It funds reporters and news organizations that pursue what it calls “the rest of the story”—solutions. It analyzes news stories and critiques those that fail to offer a solutions angle.

Solutions Journalism judges reporting on several criteria:

Solutions journalism consists of rigorous, compelling, evidence-based stories about responses to pressing social problems. Solutions journalism goes beyond the traditional five Ws of journalism—who, what, when, where, why—to the missing H, the how. Model stories contextualize a problem, analyze a response, and use compelling narratives to bring it to life. If possible, they also discuss an idea’s limitations and draw out teachable lessons.

To get a better understanding of what kinds of stories meet these standards, take a look at the Examples page on the Solutions Journalism website.

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