Before taking English 255, I had no idea how bad the worlds shortage of clean water is. I was aware that some places on earth didn't have it, but I never really gave it a second thought. As a matter of fact, I never really even thought about what that fact meant. Lots of people don't have enough clean water.
When I was assigned to pick out a nonprofit to become familiar with and to work with throughout the semester, I chose charity:water. To make a long story short, I chose it because this past summer I got really close to suffering a heat stroke, but instead suffered through what is called heat cramps. They are terrible cramps associated with lack of hydration and electrolytes, and they are extremely painful to say the least. That experience made me truly realize what a lack of water could do to a person, and made me realize how vital it really is to life.
In getting to know charity:water, I learned that there is a severe shortage of safe drinking water in lots of places around the globe. These people do have access to water, but it can take all day to obtain and it contains bacterias that cause diseases and even death. It can take hours to walk to a location with water, then once they have the water they must carry it, usually miles, back to where they live. Then they drink it and get sick. This water causes 80% of all diseases in the world. The diseases kill 4,500 children every day and kills more people than all the violence, including wars, in the world combined. One billion people, one out of every eight of us, have no choice but to drink this stuff.
Charity:water is doing something about this problem, however. Scott Harrison, the founder of the organization, started it after taking a mission trip to Africa. He saw that the shortage of water in the area led to all types of health and education problems. Obviously, the water itself led to disease, but obtaining the water led to a lack of education. Children can't spend their days in the classroom, because instead they are spending their days obtaining water. He decided to "give up his birthday," meaning that instead of asking for gifts he asked for donations to this cause.
To date charity:water has provided a source of clean water to over 1,277,430 people in seventeen different countries, and have funded 2,906 projects. They have twenty-five local partners that pay for overhead costs such as building expenses, salaries, supplies, and so on. Since the partners pay for the cost of operations, 100% of donations go to building wells. A well costs $5,000 to build and provides water to 250 people for about twenty years. Basically, for ever dollar raised one person gets clean water for one year. It's as simple as that.
I really believe in what the charity is doing at this point in my research. All the time you'll hear about some guy at the head of a "nonprofit" that's getting rich. I don't know if Scott Harrison is making a large salary for what he does, but if he is it's the partners that are paying for it and not the donations. I am really interested to see where the rest of my research goes with this, but for now I am pleased that I am more informed about this issue and to know that there are good people out there doing something about it.
-Bill
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