charity: water

In class, we watched a video and talked about charity: water. It is a non-profit organization that focuses on bringing clean and healthy water to people in other countries who don’t have access to it. Their goal since starting this organization has been to end the global water crisis and they’re optimistic through having lots of partners and supporters help them. The founder, Scott Harrison, changed his life and found his mission, after decades of working as a nightclub promoter. He went to Punta Del Este and realized how different he was and how far he had grown away from his faith. When he came back to New York City, he decided he wanted to fight global water crisis after seeing the dirty water people were drinking in other countries. He created charity: water in 2006 and decided for the organization to be completely transparent and open with the world. On their website they show proof of where every dollar goes through pictures and GPS coordinates. They also show their financials to show that they are an “open book” to the public. Another cool aspect was about their funding; They have private donors that cover all their costs so all the money donated will be used on different water projects in other countries. So far, they have funded 91,414 water projects, served 14,762,215 million people, and worked in over 29 countries.
I think this organization is doing an amazing thing, working endlessly until the global water crisis is solved. I also love how Scott Harrison had a realization about his faith and completely changed his life around to serve and help others in crisis. Another interesting thing that I hadn’t seen organizations or business do was having a birthday campaign. Instead of asking for gifts, you ask people to donate a certain amount of money to help build clean water projects. I think that is really fascinating because you and others can celebrate while helping others.

A goal that charity: water has set is to give 100 million people safe drinking water in 10 years, which costs around 3 billion dollars. So far, there has been over 9 million dollars raised from people celebrating their birthday with charity: water and hopefully it will continue to increase!