About seven people will die during the first minute of Women of the Wells' charity walk Saturday morning.
They won't die in Huntington Beach, per se, but every eight seconds, according to the World Health Organization, a child somewhere in the world dies from a disease caused by unsafe drinking water.
When the Newport Beach-based nonprofit starts its 5-kilometer trek at Beach Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway, it hopes to raise enough money to reduce those fatalities — even if it's just by a few.
The nonprofit, founded in 2005 by Huntington Beach resident Kathy Daniels, has raised money to install wells and cisterns in 11 impoverished countries in Africa, Asia and South America. Daniels and her colleagues have already paid for three wells this year, and they hope the money raised Saturday will go toward seven or eight more, at least.
"It's something we take so for granted," said group President Georgiana Willis. "When you bring clean water to a village, you're giving that village a reprieve from the disease and death that would certainly come if they went on drinking filthy water."
