Ripple Effect - Abundant Water Fundraiser

If anywhere in our local region needs a colossal amount of help, its the basketcase that is modern Laos. They’re normally somewhere in the very lowest categories of any worldwide development measure you can think of.

Visit the country, visit some cities, see their tourist towns, and then get as far from their cities as you’re comfortable with.
Suggestions: Meet some actual villagers, learn about how their basic health needs are met (the Lao Govt spend 4% of its GDP on healthcare, or $18 per person per year (PPP)), ask about the water they drink (40% use an unimproved water source), and then ask how many of the locals have either been killed or injured from leftover UXO bombies from the Vietnam War.
If you’re particularly curious, ask how many bombies locals know about but are just waiting for an UXO project crew to come back into the area.

Frankly any on-the-ground help they get is good, so long as its not totally foreign-expertise & foreign-purchased resources, or particularly admin-cost heavy.

PS: Abundant Water website about what they actually do and how they do it: http://abundantwater.org/

Engineers Without Borders does similar work but does not restrict itself to just one country. If you want your water project dollars to be more fairly distributed you could consider them as well.