While at catalyst this year I was reminded of one of my favorite charities. Charity:Water is one the many charities that’s helping provide people in developing countries with drinking water. I’d heard about it last year at catalyst, but this year Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity:Water came and spoke at the main event. His testimony of God’s faithfulness in his own life was powerful enough, but his story of bringing water to over a million people in developing countries was one of my favorite talks given at the conference this year.
Dirty water kills more people per year than any form of violence, including war. But by donating even $20 to charity water you can give clean water to one person for 20 years! $5,000 is enough to dig a well for a whole community! Today is ‘blog action day’ wherein bloggers are chellenged to write about an issue and this week’s issue happens to be – you guessed it, Water. So I decided to use this opportunity to launch a campaign to build a well.
You can help me raise money by visiting my charity water page
Charity water is an awesome charity for several reasons:
- 100% of what you donate goes straight to drilling water wells in developing countries, giving people clean water who never would have otherwise. All the administrative fees are paid for by private donors, so if you donate to Charity:Water you can know that all of your contributions are helping people get water, not for office furniture or travel expenses.
- Branding – Charity: Water has created a brand that people recognize – if you haven’t seen their ad campaign you should take a look at it. They do a good job of bringing the need home, not just guilting people into donating.
- The movement – In addition thousands of people making small donations – many more are collecting donations towards goals. This was made much easier by the launch of mycharitywater.com which is one of the first social-networking style donation sites run by a Charity
- Perhaps the coolest thing to me about Charity:Water is that it’s founder, Scott Harrison is a Christian. His amazing story at Catalyst was a testimony of God’s faithfulness to us.
So that’s it
Please, take some time and donate – you can donate as little as one dollar. In the words of Jesus in Matthew Chapter 25,
“…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”