india.

clean water at Mogotio.

I turned on the tap, and this time, clean water came out.

Back at the Mogotio clinic in Kenya only two months after my first visit, Dominic Mosa and I grinned in front of more than 100 onlookers, then cut the blue ribbon blocking the door of the new water station. Inside the kiosk, we turned two red knobs, and heard a rush of water. Clean water.

Two months ago, mud from the nearby Molo river slid through Mogotio’s pipes, turning sheets brown and stomachs green. Now, with the help of hundreds of donors, a 140-meter well has brought clean water and hope to the staff, patients and nearby community.

It startedwith a simple idea.We’d use my 32nd birthday – which also happened to be the one-year anniversary of charity: water – as an excuse to help more people in Africa get clean water. I’d ask for $32 donations in lieu of birthday gifts, and hopefully raise enough to fully fund a project.

I’d then fly to Africa with the money and drill the well, sending daily videos of the work to donors and supporters. But we needed to find a project.In northern Kenya, we found Mr. Mosa and a health clinic that desperately needed a break. We made a video, took photos, and asked for your help. We needed $40,000 to build a deep well with an electric pump, repair the tanks and piping, and construct a water station for the community’s use.

It worked. Within 2 weeks, hundreds of you responded with gifts, and more than $59,000 came in.

We went back and, through our partner Living Water International, drilled the well for Mr. Mosa and the people of Mogotio. We hit three underground aquifers, and a column of water shot skyward on the first afternoon of drilling. By day four, more than 7000 liters of clean water per hour flowed from a pipe. We knew we were on to something, and didn’t want it to end with just my birthday.

We wanted to help more health clinics, so we asked all of you born in September to sacrifice your birthdays and join me. More than 80 people signed up, each asking for their age in currency. As September closed, we’d raised more than $120,000. Enough not only for Mogotio, but enough to fund two other water projects at clinics in the same state.

Yesterday, I visited the Abidah Health Center near Kisumu, the second project funded through these efforts. Clean water ran loudly now through the pipes, and we sat under a shade tree listening to grateful men and women as they stepped forward to offer thanks and gratitude. “We simply have no words” the community leaders said.

Neither did we.

* * *

We’d like to invite you to view the newly launched September site, where our designer Vik has spent more than 100 hours putting the new videos, photos and stories together.

charitywater.org/september

Included is the latest video from Monday’s ceremony at Mogotio where you can watch as we did, children drinking clean water for the first time in their lives.

I head from Kenya to Northern Uganda this morning to check on 18 completed charity: water wells. I hope soon to bring you more stories of lives changed by your donations.

Thanks for your continued support.

- Scott Harrison

liberia.

A city tap where people in Monrovia, Liberia pay to collect drinking water.

Monrovia, Liberia.
March, 2007

Most of you haven’t thought much about water today.

I’ll bet you’re less than 100 feet away right now from a tap that can dispense free and clean water. But tap water might not be something you drink often. Many of you will have bottled water with you, perhaps on your desk or in your handbag. In fact, if you live in America and are like most, you’ll use an average of 150 gallons today without even thinking about it.

But what if you were born somewhere else? What if you were born in Liberia, West Africa? What would water mean to you today?

Try to suspend your reality for a moment, and travel with me to a small and now peaceful West African nation. Explore city and country living in sunny Liberia.

City Living.

You live in the bustling coastal capital, Monrovia. You’re one of about a million people here and it’s an exciting time. Streetlights come on slowly each month now as power grids and tangled wires broken from 14 years of civil war are brought back online. There’s now a single working stoplight in town, and dilapidated taxis crash to a halt on red, giving way to a stream of alternate traffic. Your president is the first woman ever elected to lead an African country, and she’s making progress. 15,000 UN peacekeepers usher in a new hope for your nation, each day, chaos is every so slowly replaced with order.

But conditions are still among the worst in the world here.

You are fortunate enough to live in a small house with a good roof of zinc and splintered wooden windows that swing open on hinges, but your neighborhood is truly vile. The dry and dusty area around your house is littered with garbage and bile. There’s no sewage system in town, or in the country for that matter. The public latrines are ramshackle tin structures built over the river, and small children stoop on the shores. Human waste floats downstream, and at the beaches, the golden sand smells and ocean waves carry fecal matter. You dread the rainy season’s approach in late May. The downpours come, the rivers and swamps rise and sweep, and your neighborhood turns into an open sewer.

But today is dry and hot, and you need water. You have a few options.

Option 1. You’ve got some money in your pocket. You grab your two 5-gallon Jerry Cans and head over to a nearby city “tap” for water. This is a new thing – progress again you could say – as most days water now runs weakly through city pipes. There’s a wait, but you stand patiently in line for 30 minutes and pay the attendant 10 Liberian Dollars for each jug (about 8 cents). He grabs the dirty vacuum cleaner hose attached to the city tap, and fills your buckets. There’s a square cement hole next to you that collects the spillage, and it’s a nasty mess you avoid stepping in.

Option 2. You had a bad day selling your wares at market yesterday, and don’t have a single Liberian dollar to your name. You hope business will be better today, so you can at least get something to eat. But you need water now. Instead of the city tap, you head to one of the open wells nearby. You use a shredded tire to lower a badly broken algae-coated bucket into the hole and lift the water out. The water comes out milky and white, so you head back to your back porch, where you’ve got a bag of sand hung from sticks. You dump the well water into your homemade filter, and place a bucket underneath. Sand is amazing at filtering out contaminants, but you couldn’t afford to buy clean sand, and instead got this sand from the beach, Monrovia’s toilet. The water looks clean as it comes out, and you hope for the best as you drink, cook and clean with the 10 gallons you collected.

COUNTRY LIVING.

It’s lush, green and beautiful near the border with Guinea, and cooler at night than in the city. Malaria’s a killer here, but you’ve had it so many times now, your body has worked up some resistance to it and it’s more of a regular nuisance than a threat to your life now.

You live in a mud house with a leaky roof in a town with about 750 others, and you’ll be lucky to make $150 this year. You farm cassava, and can generally keep food on the table. You use the 50 cents a day to buy rice, fish and soap.

Water is big trouble for you here. Unlike the conveniences of the city, here you’ve got to walk quite a distance into the jungle to find the pond where you’ll gather your water. The village pigs use the same pond to bathe and defecate, and even though the water looks pretty clear, you hate the fact that everybody else from the village wades into the middle to collect water. You’ve had diarrhea for three weeks now, and suspect the water. You would carry yourself to the nearest clinic 15 miles away if you had the money for transport, but even if you got yourself there, the $2 admission fee and $3 meds would be out of reach. You suffer silently and hope your stomach will return to normal.

You just heard some people came and put in a freshwater well in a village about 5 miles away, and wished your village could get enough money together to provide itself with clean water. But even collectively, a few thousand dollars here in Liberia is impossible.

* * *

I spent the last 7 days seeing about the “water business” as they say here in Liberia. Travels with camera took me through the slums of Monrovia to dusty towns in the jungle, where I followed children as they fetched water from fetid ponds and swamps. I met some incredibly courageous people, more faces to the world’s 1.1 billion without access to clean water.

Please take a moment to view 29 images from Liberia here.

Helping Liberia.

You can help us give people clean water in Liberia.

We are adding Liberia to the countries we work in, and Sunday, charity: water committed to fund the construction of 30 new freshwater wells in the country. This will bring our total African wells in development to 126. Amazing, really – you’ve helped us accomplish so much in only 7 months. We’ve raised more than $670,000, and continue to need your help and financial support.

reception to the project has been overwhelming. If you live in London, please consider joining the team. There are lots of ways to get involvedä in particular, the team is looking for people who can assist or have contacts in the following areas: web, creative/design, media, events and fundraising (corporate and individual donors). Please contact: jenny.holt@charityis.org

NEW YORK. Charity is looking for both full-time staff and summer interns. If you’d like more information, please query jobs@charityis.org for descriptions.

FINAL NOTE:

Before I left for Africa, we learned that the Internal Revenue Service approved our application for 501c3 status. All contributions made to charity global since our inception are fully tax-deductible.
- Scott Harrison. March 13, 2007.

Get involved.
www.charityis.org

the sundance wells

the sundance wells / thursday’s NYC event.

THE SUNDANCE WELLS – Most of you know that we brought the charity: water exhibition out to the Sundance Film Festival last week. A series of miracles I guess that started with a $20,000+ donation of space from The GreenHouse Project, who turned over their rented gallery space on Main Street in Park City to us. Then a free condo from a friend for the volunteers, and a donated truck with unlimited mileage from Manhattan Mini Storage to drive the art and water to Utah.

Amidst a festival of schwag (logoed stuff given away for free by companies) we thought we’d be lucky to sell enough $20 charity: water to build a well or two ($6000 – $8000) but instead, we brought home $23,200! Enough for 6 wells in Ethiopia, or 15 wells in Liberia (the newest water project we’re developing.)

More than 1500 visited the gallery during the 5 day run, and some wept at the images and stories of those without access to clean water. Kevin Bacon, Billy Baldwin, Keri Russell, Tim Hutton and Dakota Fanning supported us, but the generosity among the Park City locals was the real story. The show also generated a lot of West Coast interest, and we are now beginning to build charity: committees in both Los Angeles in San Francisco in 2007. If you live on the West Coast and want to help us bring the project to town, please email us at: westcoast@charityis.org

24 pictures of Sundance Here

THURSDAY’S NYC EVENT – The generous team at Ling Skin Care (who have now sold more than $3000 of charity: water in their Soho and Union Square locations) have teamed up with TWINKLE and event planners GBH to throw a fundraiser in our honor. The event is this Thursday, February 1, in the beautiful HIRO BALLROOM of the Maritime Hotel. Cost of entry is only a $20 donation for a bottle of charity: water, and they’ve made up 500 great gift bags. 100 percent of the door money builds wells in Africa. Join us for free cocktails: 9 p.m. – 11 p.m.

It’s their show in our honor, but we’ll take the first 150 RSVP’s and make sure you get in and give us that $20. Want to come? RSVP: thursday@charityis.org

The Hiro Ballroom’s on 9th Avenue at 16th Street. NYC.

More updates on well progress and upcoming programs soon. As well as that new website I keep promising. – Scott Harrison
Check out our needs list

Get your company involved. Sell water at the office. Or sponsor a well. Contact us

the first charity: water advertisement

the first charity: water advertisement, space donated by ID-Magazine.
charity: water. progress
January, 2007
forwarded? lost formatting? see the post here

- London to New York

My mother was right again. She normally is actually, this time guessing I’d manage to get another newsletter off on the plane back to NY. I’m returning from a few weeks in Europe, where I had opportunity to lecture and set up a London committee. Here’s an update on things.

MONEY FOR WELLS. We’re a bit taken aback really, at how much we’ve been able to accomplish in less than 6 months and are extremely excited for the future. With your help, we’ve been able to raise more than $500,000. We have already finished 6 wells serving 30,000 in Bobi, Uganda. Next week, we’ll start granting money to our four partners on the ground in Africa to build and rehabilitate another 65! Thousands of people in Malawi, Uganda, Central African Republic and Ethiopia will drink clean and safe water for the first time. Thousands of kids will enjoy better health and have an opportunity to attend school. There’s really nothing else we’d rather do. Except more.

Over $100,000 of the donations came online, something that makes people’s mouths drop when I tell them, but that’s partly thanks to friends like DAILY CANDY and FLAVORPILL, whose readers bought the $20 virtual charity: water bottles and donated to the various well projects. We’re still busy building and conceiving the new website which we hope will lead the way for online non-profit accountability in years to come. Web 2.0 for non-profits we hope. If you’re a developer and want to help, please write us.

PROOF – In the coming months, expect us to begin proving the wells you’ve helped us fund. Additionally, we’re always looking for volunteer photographers and videographers to fly to Africa for us. If you know someone who’s perfect for a field team, please let them know about our project.

LONDON 2007. So we’re very grateful that an amazing group of 15 young professionals have stepped up, volunteering their time to bring charity: water across the pond in a big way. We plan to launch the initiative in late summer of 2007, with large outdoor and indoor exhibitions and an education program that mobilizes and empowers students to play their part in the global water crisis.
We’ll also broaden the scope of the charity: water placements and sales, looking to incorporate hotels, theaters, department stores, boutiques, bars, restaurants, clubs, spas and salons, even ice skating rinks and yoga studios who want to do something about the billion without access to clean water.

You can see a picture of our London team or get involved here: http://www.charityis.com/london

LONDON – STORY. As I was leaving for the airport, I went to share the work with some new friends in Notting Hill Gate and ask for their support. After I showed some of my images, their 11-year-old son went to his room and brought 200 pounds down, placing his savings on the table. That bodes well I think, our first major donor, an 11-year-old with $392 who wants to help kids his age in Africa drink clean water and go to school. I can’t think of a better way to start the push.

CHARITY:WATER BOTTLE v2.0 – Good news for those of you who care about our environment. charity: water is switching to environment-friendly corn starch bottles in the USA. We didn’t feel too guilty selling plastic bottles of water at $20 where every penny went to help people get clean water in Africa, but after finally finding a solution, we’re making the switch.

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL – The water exhibition that many of you saw last month on the walls of the Metropolitan Pavilion in NYC is on its way to Utah thanks to Lani and a couple volunteers. Manhattan Mini Storage was kind enough to donate a truck with unlimited mileage so we can take the more than $25k of images donated by Graphic Systems and 80 cases of water to the festival. The team at Project GreenHouse has donated their prime gallery space on Main Street and will be hosting us for 4 days, January 23 – 26. We’re still looking for volunteers. Drop us a line at sundance@charityis.org if you or friends live near Park City. I’ll be out there from Wednesday on.

VOLUNTEERS – Our volunteer base is growing. If you’re one of the hundreds who signed up recently on the website, you’ll hear from us in February where we hope to have a town hall type meeting and plug you into various roles to move our projects forward. If you’re interested in giving your time, email us at volunteer@charityis.org – tell us a little about what you do, and your availibility.

DONATE – $500k and 71 wells is only the tip of the iceberg. 1.1. Billion people on the planet don’t have access to clean water. That’s one in six of us. If you’d like to donate to the well projects, or to our educational and awareness efforts, please give online at http://www.charityis.org or mail checks to

charity global
511 6th ave, #196
NY, NY 10011

It’s a honor to serve the poor with you all.

Scott Harrison
founder, charity:
scott@charityis.org
www.charityis.org

POSTSCRIPT. Some of you may remember in my last email from Ethiopia, I wrote about finding patients there with cleft lips and arranging for their surgeries. There were 5 patients who received surgery, and photos have just come back of the first two, Sulfiso and Tariku. Really exciting.

buy a $20 bottle of charity: water
100% of the money goes to water projects in Africa

View our needs list

Get your company involved. Sell water at the office. Sponsor a well. Contact us

ethiopia

charity: water. ETHIOPIA
November, 2006

- Bulgeta, Ethiopia.

About 5 hours south of Addis Ababa, Bulgeta sits at 6000 feet, and boasts almost that many inhabitants. To get there, your sturdy 4×4 would snake south through Ethiopia’s mountains, then turn right at a town called Shone. Thirty minutes later, navigating an impossibly rocky road full of children, cows and donkeys – of push carts loaded with wood and water – you’d pass a primary school where hundreds pack in to learn reading, writing and arithmetic.

Moments later, you’d find the water source that served Bulgeta for generations and stole many of its children’s lives.

For years, men, women and children drank from the village’s large pond. So did their livestock. To the left, trees cover a path that circles it, behind lies a field where the cattle graze. The sloping grass is littered with cow dung and carries waste down its slope to the pond during the rains. The water is filled with green algae and muck, making many sick in Bulgeta.

But like many poor communities in Africa, healthcare is out of reach for most there. Those who could afford treatment at the nearby Shone clinic would be carried on the shoulders of others for antibiotics that cost between 40 and 80 cents. Those that couldn’t stayed at home and suffered. Many died with parasitic diseases, some of typhoid, others from dehydration or plain old diarrhea.

The people of Bulgeta knew the water was killing them.

“It is not clean at all,” Marcos, one of the village elders told me through a translator in Amharic. “But we have no other solution. We have to drink it.” He told me some people used to walk two hours a day to fetch water from the source, and then grabbed his wife and colorful 20 liter jerry cans and jumped in the pond to show me how they used to gather the water.

But not anymore.

Thanks to humanitarian efforts, clean water arrived a month ago in the form of a freshwater well. It cost about $3500 to drill and cast, and now sits on a hill above the pond. It has changed Bulgeta. Able to pump about a million gallons of clean and safe drinking water a year, it has brought hope and health into town. You see, clean water changes everything in Africa. The precious children of Bulgeta are proof of that, crowding the well, eager to show me how clean their water now was. (click here for video)

Dinkanich drinks from Bulgeta’s freshwater well spout

I spent 11 days in Ethiopia, and visited many villages like Bulgeta. One of the organizations charity: supports on the ground has drilled more than 150 wells in Ethiopia in the past few years, providing clean water to over 750,000 people.

They are a remarkable team of expatriates and locals. The oldest, John Ed Clark, is a slim 69-year-old man with bushy eyebrows and furrowed brow. He told me that I accompanied him on his 60th trip to the country. He has three more trips planned next year, and says plainly he’ll keep coming until he can’t.

I learned all about the drilling process and even operated the controls of the 30-year-old rig with expert driller Curt King. We looked for water on the grounds of a deaf school, and I was surprised to learn how involved the process was. A Seattle resident, Curt’s been at clean water for almost three decades and reckons he’s drilled more than 2000 water wells in his lifetime. He’s tall and kind and speaks shyly and softly about his work.

Emotionally, Curt talks of the women and children whom he perhaps best serves, the women he sees often weeping as he finishes a well. Those “without a voice.” Curt wants the work to go on when he’s unable to continue, and has been training three locals – Solomon, Nigusse, and Demoze, to take his place when he retires.

With our help and funding, Curt and his team seek to transform another 60 communities like Bulgeta in 2007. Curt hopes for 100 wells.

Curt & Solomon laugh at my drilling skills and improper attire.

After leaving our drill team, I traveled more than 1000 miles over the next days to remote, water-stressed parts of the country and saw firsthand Ethiopia’s great need for water. I photographed children digging in sand for the precious liquid. I saw hunched women walk torturous miles in the heat with jugs of dirty fluid tied to their backs. I put faces to the country’s 45 million+ without access to clean and safe drinking water. The stories I’d like to tell would fill ten newsletters.

Touring a health clinic that served 103,000 people and had no doctors, I watched the administrator flip through the book, seemingly shocked himself at the incidence of waterborne disease. Not quite as high as the often quoted UN number of 80 percent, his clinic still saw about 50 percent. The administrator jumped in our truck and drove us to the local source he said was responsible for the illness. We stared as ponds with cattle and children shared the same drink. Women washed clothes, bathed and drank in the same place. We stood over a small stagnant hole, and I incredulously watched as a young boy in a ragged gray sweatshirt and swollen feet gathered 10 liters. Water is desperately needed here, water is desperately needed in so many places.

You can help.

Support charity: with your gifts over the coming holiday season as we team with those transforming lives of those in need. Your support allows charity: to continue our work to spark greater global awareness about issues surrounding poverty and to connect people with ways they can make a difference. Through our water campaign, our educational exhibitions, special events and $20 charity: water bottle sales, we are committed to bringing clean water into African communities like Bulgeta while building a community of compassion and concern here at home.

Please get involved.

VIEW MORE OF MY PHOTOGRAPHS FROM ETHIOPIA HERE

SEE VIDEO FROM BULGETA HERE

donate to charity

buy a $20 bottle of charity: water. build wells.

view our needs list

postscript.

Sulfiso & Tariku

The most special moment for me in Ethiopia wasn’t water related, but may have meaning to those of you who served with me on the Mercy Ship, or followed the last two years of patient stories in West Africa. Early one morning last week, I took a walk in the dim morning light just before 6 a.m. and prayed quietly for the day. Moments after I finished, a man strolled out of the bush and joined me on my walk. As I looked into his face, I saw that he had a prominent cleft lip and must have been about 30 years old. I jumped inside, knowing from experience I’d be able to help him, as the nearby Christian hospital in Soddo boasted a world-class surgeon.

We walked for about a kilometer together in the growing dawn, unsuccesfully communicating in language but sharing smiles. He left me finally with a wave, and I took note of where he walked into the bush. Later that afternoon, I tracked him down with a translator and showed him a copy I had of Need Magazine where I’d recently published before and after photos of cleft surgeries done on the Mercy Ship. I learned the man’s name was Sulfiso, and he agreed to accept the surgery I’d arranged for. We discussed transport.

Then, a few hours, later, I learned God wasn’t happy with just one patient. Two years of experience, and, well I’d better use it I guess. A 9-year-old boy, Tariku, turned up where I was staying and showed me his face. He was shy, bearing the stigma I’d so often seen of the common birth defect. Happily, I was able to schedule Tariku for surgery as well.

But two wasn’t enough. On my way back through town a week later, I learned that another three patients had surfaced at the house. Their treatments were arranged as well.

Five lives and faces changed forever by simple 45-minute surgeries that will cost me only about $200 each. It’s incredibly humbling.

-scott harrison

60 wells

charity: water.
60 wells. 10.26.06

I write to you on layover in the United Arab Emirates. I leave Dubai in a few hours for one of the world’s poorest countries, Ethiopia.

I’ll be joining a freshwater drill rig in Ethiopia’s south, a modern steel monster providing desperately needed clean water for some of the country’s 77 million people. I was shocked at what I recently learned about Ethiopia. 57 million – that’s 76 percent of the population – don’t have access to clean water.

57 million without clean water I fight not to take for granted every day.

The millions draw water from fetid sinkholes and swamps they share with cattle – holes rife with disease, hopelessness. If that wasn’t bad enough, most walk hours a day to reach these sources, lugging contaminated 40-pound jugs back to their village.

We have been, and will continue to ask you to do something about it.

I’ll be visiting one of the four Africa projects our charity: water initiative supports, this one run by the 4-star non-profit Healing Hands.

We look to fund 60 of their freshwater wells for starters, and are on the way. Each well pumps about a million gallons a year, supplying more than 2000 people daily with clean and safe drinking water. And they cost only $3500. Next week, I hope to bring you deep into the villages with still and moving images – to tell you the personal stories of those who need our help, and what that help looks like.

In the meantime, between planes, a recap of recent progress.

With the help of many of you, some who followed my long journey with Mercy Ships, and some who I’ve just recently met – our non-profit, charity: got off the ground quicker than I thought possible. In only a few months, we’ve raised some seed money to put charity: in business, and developed educational and fund-raising programs like the citywide water exhibition.

We’ve also raised more than $90,000 for wells in Africa through charity: water sales and pledges!

Many of you also visited the charity: water exhibition and tower that toured New York City parks in September and October – Union Square, Washington Square, Tompkin’s Square, Battery Park and finally, Central Park’s Columbus Circle.

With the help of more than 108 volunteers and on a shoestring budget, the water show educated and engaged more than 20,000 people and collected more than $19,000 in water donations and t-shirt sales! 100 percent of that money goes directly to provide clean water in Ethiopia, Malawi, Central African Republic and Uganda. Press and pictures here.

We’ve packed up the outdoor show for the winter, but are planning a 12 city-tour through America next summer. We’re also building committees that will help bring the effort to London, Paris, Rome and Amsterdam. If you live in a major city and want to be a part of the project, drop us a line.

* * *

Water sales / Distribution. We’ve been talking with some of the world’s top fashion, spa, restaurant and hotel brands who will offer our $20 bottle of charity: water to their customers over the holiday season and in 2007, many even generously matching their customer donations. if you’d like more info, please email partnerships@charityis.com. We want your company involved.

* * *

Uganda update. The last time I wrote you from Northern Uganda, I included pictures and a story about a camp where 31,638 refugees were literally dying of thirst. There was only one well there pumping water for only 2000, forcing scores of refugees to search elsewhere, digging holes in the ravines and gullies. Many also gathered water from a brown pond nearby (see bottom image).

Thanks to your generosity and support at the NYC water launch event, we’ve already started helping the citizens of Bobi camp, drilling and rehabilitating 5 water wells there. I’ll post pictures and progress online in a few weeks. Thanks again to the 700 of you that bought charity: water at that event.

We hope to continue to give meaning to your gift as you see thousands of lives transformed.

And if you missed the last event, we’re planning another 750 person water gala in New York, mid-December.

More from Ethiopia next week….

* * *

Please support us.

We need your financial support to serve. If you are in a position to support the efforts of charity: – please find giving instructions online at http://www.charityis.com/donate.html

Want to volunteer? volunteer@charityis.com

Want to tell a friend about what we’re doing?
Please do. More information is at www.charityis.com

Buy a case of water for your office.
Cmon, it’s only $480. We deliver free with volunteers in Manhattan. Do that by clicking here.

-scott harrison

————————————————————————

The local source of water for drinking, cooking and washing at Bobi refugee camp, Northern Uganda.

dubai

Dubai, 3 a.m.

12+ hour layover in Dubai. My second time in this airport recently, and i’m not a fan.
Atlantic City meets Vegas. Give me Africa anyday. Ethiopia tomorrow by noon.

embracing ethiopia

embracing ethiopia

As I prepare for a 12-day trip to Ethiopia on Wednesday, I am shocked to learn just how bad the water situation is there.

The country has more than 76 million people, and 76 percent of the population has no access to clean and safe drinking water.

I go to meet with the organizations we work with on the ground there, Healing Hands and Living Water. The charity: water initiative seeks to fully fund 60 wells in the south of Ethiopia, yet I know already so very many more are needed.

Please watch this space for images and videos from the field.

-scott

charity: water success

charity: water – Success!

a big thank you to all that attended the 10-day run of the charity: water outdoor exhibition in New York City.
it was a huge success made possibly by 107 amazing volunteers and great weather!

- we touched and educated more than 20,000 people

- raised just shy of $20,000 in $20 bottle sales and a few water t-shirts.

here are some pictures.

Central Park / Columbus Circle

setting up in Battery Park

Union Square – South Plaza

Educating elementary school children in Tompkins Square Park