The story of charity: water - September Campaign 2009

Visit www.borninseptember.org to join the campaign.

Back from Uganda.

Our water projects manager Becky Straw just returned from Northern Uganda, where it all started for charity: water. In 2006, donors funded the first set of wells in a refugee camp that desperately needed clean water. Today, with your help, we have 94 projects in Uganda serving people with clean water. Our friend and photographer Esther Havens took some amazing portraits and got to meet the people we’ve served.

See the photo captions for a glimpse of everyday life - the story from this trip is coming soon.

charity: water in the windows of Saks Fifth Avenue.

Kicking off the new partnership with S5A with window displays. Saks Fifth Avenue has partnered with charity: water again to bring clean drinking water to communities in need. If you pass by Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in the next couple of weeks, you’ll see three of their stunning window displays filled with our Jerry Cans and photos. The photos on display are part of our “Bringing it Home” series created by Lynette Astaire.

See more charity: water news and upcoming events here >

“The end of the world.”
A Story by Esther Havens, Nicky Yates and Becky Straw.



Today is World Water Day, and while a billion people on our planet still lack access to clean and safe drinking water, we’re excited about the great progress being made around the world. Through your help, charity: water has now funded 1,247 water projects in 14 countries, transforming the lives of more than 650,000 people. Our team just returned from visiting our wells in Central African Republic, and it gives us great joy to share these stories and photos with you.
- Scott Harrison, founder

* * *

“We saw you fly in,” the villagers told us, pointing to the sky. We’d arrived in Central African Republic (a.k.a. CAR). Since there’s only one flight in and out of the country per week, we knew they meant it. CAR is one of the poorest countries in the world, landlocked in the dead center of Africa.

Traveling 12 hours deep into a lush rainforest on narrow dirt roads, we bumped up and down violently in an SUV to a region that’s home to the African elephant, silverback gorilla, black mamba snake and also a forgotten people – the Bayaka Pygmies. The Bayakas are considered outcasts of society because they live in the jungle, often being viewed by others as “animals” of the rainforest.

Pulling up to a village known as “The End of the World” because it’s literally where all roads end, we saw mothers feeding their babies next to small domed huts. Children played with wooden toys and practiced throwing spears. The tallest of the Bayaka Pygmies stood only about five feet tall, and almost all had unique facial markings, scars and sharpened teeth, which represent beauty to them.

When we asked them “What is your age?” or “Ngu tti mo ayeke ok,” in the local language Sambo, the Pygmies couldn’t answer. Most had no idea how old they were. We found quickly that the more appropriate question was “How many children do you have,” which they were proud to answer. A typical mother here had about 8 children, and saw 4 of them die prematurely from water-borne disease or malnutrition.

We were greeted with huge excitement, and two of the young girls, Jasmine and Carol, led us on a 15-minute walk down rocky paths to the unprotected, polluted springs where they formerly collected water. We winced as they walked barefoot into the water and took a drink, eagerly showing us what it used to be like here. They both suffered frequent stomach pains from drinking it but had no choice. We also met Bertin and Goze, two 10-year-old boys who barely had any toes left. They suffered from a common disease that affects the majority of Pygmy communities – “jiggers” or parasitic fleas that bury in the skin, lay eggs, and eventually eat away at the skin. They are eliminated simply by washing the feet with clean water. But clean water hadn’t ever existed here before.

The girls next led us eagerly to see a charity: water well that was recently completed here at the “The End of the World.” We couldn’t wait to see the crystal clear water streaming out of the new pump. A few minutes later, we watched as the village kids gathered around and pressed the well’s foot-pump up and down, making a game of pumping water. Clean water was now available for the whole village, including the new school where Jasmine and Carol will have the rare opportunity to get an education.

Since gaining its independence from France in the 1960’s, four civil wars have ravaged the country, and small groups of rebels still live in “the bush,” pillaging villages and harboring war criminals from neighboring countries. Unemployment (at 90%) and disease rates are among the highest in Africa.

Yet amidst the turmoil, clean water now flows to “The End of the World” and other Bayaka and Central African villages due to the generosity of charity: water donors and men like Jim Hocking, who heads up local partner outfit Integrated Community Development International (ICDI) with a passion and love for CAR.

Through 80 Central African staff members, ICDI delivers water, sanitation, microfinance, orphan care, and agricultural services to CAR. For the past two years, charity: water has worked through a partnership with Living Water International and ICDI to fund 178 water projects, bringing clean water to over 200,000 people here. charity: water has been able to give 1 out of every 19 people in Central African Republic access to life’s most basic need.

Though Jim Hocking has been evacuated three times, held up by rebels twice, suffered malaria, typhoid, rabies and skin cancer, he is intent on continuing to develop and equip national staff so ICDI can continue to work through periods of social unrest, even if he has to flee the country. When it might be unsafe for us to travel,” Jim says, “My team can.”

Though this past year has brought various challenges to our own country in the form of mortgage woes, economic instability, and rising employment rates, we learned a lot from this unassuming man with a quick wit, contagious smile and unswerving devotion. We learned to keep going, to keep serving, even when the road is rough. Literally.

One day, it took 18 hours to see two water projects because the “roads” through the jungle were so terrible that they ripped two of our “ultra-durable tires” and overheated our radiator. With each setback, Jim would merely stop the car; lift his thermos, and joke, “All right, I think it’s a sign we need another coffee break.”

Despite rampant insecurity, we found gradual change happening in CAR. We found people working in harsh, uncertain conditions to improve lives in their communities and country. We found out how our wells made villages healthier, allowed children to go to school for the first time and helped gardens to flourish. We found forgotten yet proud families. We found hope.

For our team at charity: water, helping 1 out of every 19 people feels like a good start in a forgotten country of 3.8 million. But like Jim, we’ve set our sights on the other 18 and won’t stop until everyone here has access to clean and safe drinking water.

	See photos from the story >	Our partners on the ground:
	Watch Jim from ICDI talk about his work >
	Watch “Time Bomb” - a 2-minute video from CAR >
	Donate. $20 can give a person clean drinking water for 20 years >

Hey all, here’s a recent presentation i did on Saturday in Irvine, California about the story of charity: water. -Scott Harrison

The Budde Family Well.

In preparation for the fall launch of our Water for Schools program,  I had the pleasure of traveling to Ethiopia a few weeks ago with four fathers and five of their daughters, ages 9 – 14. One of the dads, Shawn Budde, has been volunteering as a strategy consultant with charity: water for over 6 months and has been a huge blessing to us. On this trip, I had a surprise for him. I was going to take him and his daughters to a well he’d helped fund through the borninseptember.org campaign. Filming them at the Adiayfela school was one of the high points of 2009. I remember smiling through tears as we saw the handmade signs that read “We love Budde family” and listened to speeches. We asked Shawn to write about his experience. As so many of you have contributed to the more than 1,247 water projects we’ve now funded, I ask you to put yourself in his shoes and imagine the many celebrations around the world you’ve made possible like this one.  I hope this video and Shawn’s words will inspire you.    
- Scott Harrison. February, 2009.


In Shawn’s words.

I’ve been involved with charity: water for about nine months now, and I’ve definitely got an intellectual grasp on the problem of providing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. However, it helps to understand things on an emotional level.

Last August I got an opportunity that most donors will never get - I got to go with charity: water to visit projects in Ethiopia. I remember being struck by how completely different their lives were than those of anyone in the developed world. I came back committed to raise the money to build a well.

In the fall, charity: water started to plan a trip for a few students to Ethiopia, and I asked my two older daughters (Katie, 12, and Julia, 9) to join us. On our second night in the country, I learned we’d be heading to see “our” well the next day. I hadn’t known that our well was even on the agenda.

Our well was in seriously remote territory, a three-hour drive from our very shabby hotel in Adwa. The road was pale, dusty and barren. The cars were unbearably hot with the windows rolled up, yet frustratingly dusty with them rolled down. Julia hadn’t been eating enough and felt sick.
 
We rolled into the village of Adiayfela just short of noon. We could see a huge crowd, perhaps a thousand people, had gathered to welcome us. As we got out of the trucks, the first thing I saw was our name on handwritten signs - “We love for Budde Family” and “BUDDE FAMILY is a way of development in Ethiopia.” I hung back to see how my girls would react. They were very surprised and excited. And I was in tears. My intellectual side was completely overwhelmed by my emotional side.
 
In most ways, this celebration was no different than any other. The women “lolled” and threw popcorn. The children held up signs expressing their gratitude and crafts that they had made. We sat and ate with our new friends that would soon drink the clean water we’d been able to provide.  In other ways, this was different from other celebrations- I understood at an emotional level the right for clean, safe drinking water. We got to see the school where children sit 80 to a class on mud benches. Where teachers write on chalkboards with holes in them. Where children make models of radios out of mud. The contrast with the schools my children attend was stunning. My girls left Adiayfela exhausted, physically and emotionally. They also left committed to raising enough money for another well.

Tonight I will be helping Julia assemble the presentation she will make to her class about her trip to Ethiopia. She will tell her peers about a world so different that most of them will never experience or be able to understand the way she can now.
 
A world where the most basic need is a daily struggle. A world where an $8,000 well can transform more than a 1,000 lives. A world where we made a difference. She will talk about our well, and I will try to not to cry.

- Shawn Budde, February 2009

Sponsor a well. Please contact sponsorawell@charitywater.org for more detailed information and a member of our staff will get back to you promptly.

$5,000 can build a freshwater well in a village
and provide 250+ people with clean drinking water.

Jawe, Ethiopia.

GPS:  N 08º47.170 / E038º38.952

Spent the morning at a place called Jawe. Only about 45 minutes outside of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s bustling capital. I was surprised to find the people here drinking from a swamp.
Jawe has more than 4,450 people, and they desperately need clean water. This pond is the ONLY source of drinking water, and two months a year it dries up and is unavailable.
During that time, the women and children have to fetch water from more than 5 miles away.
Our partner in Ethiopia, A Glimmer of Hope foundation, has proposed a full scale water supply project to help the people at Jawe, and deliver clean water to six nearby villages, one health post and an elementary school.
Stay tuned to learn how you can help. 

At about one p.m. today, I had the distinct honor of officially opening a charity: water well in Tigray, Ethiopia sponsored through the Saks Fifth Avenue campaign.

More than 600 people greeted us with an hour and a half of singing, dancing, drumming and speeches.
The women told us they used to walk 1.5 hours to a dirty water source. A young girl from the nearby school said she used to have to pull leeches from her water.

Not anymore.

That young girl now walks only seven minutes to the well, which is serving the people of May Woyni, and also a nearby school we visited where 800 students attend.
The men, women and children here are now drinking clean and safe water.   

The Pavement Dwellers. Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Our water projects in the Cyclone Sidr affected zone are GREAT. I Saw about 10 of our 180 wells and Pond Sand Filters. Will get those photos together over the next few days en route to Ethiopia.

You can read the story of Cyclone Sidr from last year here >

Through partner Concern Worldwide Bangladesh, charity: water is exploring exciting opportunities for urban water / sanitation projects in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

More than 20,000 people live on the streets of Dhaka. They are called the “Pavement Dwellers,” and many make only 30 cents a day. For work, they collect and recycle garbage, clean, and do small jobs.

Entire families with small children live on medians, under stadiums, and in dark alleys filled with sewage and cobwebs.
We’re excited to learn how we might be able to meet some of their great needs for clean water, bathrooms and bathing facilities.

-Scott Harrison

58,345 hours for clean water.

Orissa, India

I jumped back, but too late, as coconut juice splashed all over my jeans. The upside-down transfer from coconut to steel cup hadn’t factored in the volume differential. 

I sat on a plastic chair in the Engreda Village Baptist church, tucked away in the rural hills of Eastern India. Men and women of the community had gathered here to thank us for funding a piped water system that brought clean and safe drinking water down from a new well in the mountains. 

41-year-old Junash was the one that spilled on me, but I didn’t mind, and drank two cups of the warm juice. A few minutes earlier, he’d made a speech about what happened here.

I learned that the 567 residents of Engreda had big problems with water. Their primary source for years had been a polluted stream in the valley beneath the village, which I saw a few moments later. 

“In the stream, we would remove a little bit of sand, and the water would ooze out into it. We used to drink that, and the children and adults used to get diarrhea,” Junesh said.

“We are poor. Whatever savings we had, we spent on curing our waterborne diseases. The poor remained poor.”

Not anymore.

Through last year’s partnership with retailer Saks Fifth Avenue, more than $540,000 was raised – enough for 100 water projects in Honduras, India and Ethiopia.

Engreda was one of those projects, but the water running from their taps came at a higher price than our funding.

The people had petitioned our implementing partner Gram Vikas to help them with the water problem. But before bringing clean water to Engreda, Gram Vikas asked villagers to first give a year of their time to construct toilets and bathing rooms. 

For over 30 years, Gram Vikas has taken a unique approach to development work. For them, sanitation is the key to good health, and community participation is the key to sustainability. “Sanitation” meant toilets and showers here; “participation,” a year plus of hard work.

Junash said Gram Vikas’ proposal was initially met with some resistance, as each of Engreda’s 130 families would have to do a “lot of work” that would cost “a lot of money.”

For Gram Vikas to work in a community, 100% of the people must agree and contribute, and after a short time, they did. 

But their involvement didn’t stop there. 

After all 130 toilets and bathing rooms were constructed, community members then helped lay pipe from the well Gram Vikas constructed high in the mountain near a spring. It was tough going. Villagers spent more than a month breaking stones in the rocky ground but beamed with pride at their achievement. 

I sometimes hear people accuse those in the developing world of laziness. But the more I travel, the more I find that’s just not true. Communities like Engreda give what they have, even if it’s not the cold cash that comes easier for many of us.

Written on the wall next to our contribution was theirs, and while not in the form of a check, its value far exceeded ours. 

The stone, bricks, gravel and labor the people of Engreda added to the project came to $19,851. At least half of that was sweat equity and calculated at the going rate of 17 cents an hour. For comparison, if their labor took place in the United States, where hourly minimum wage is $6.55, they’d have contributed more than $364,000 of labor value - 58,345 hours.

In that light, charity: water’s $7,822 contribution for the hard costs of piping, taps and the water tower was a steal.

Back at the Gram Vikas compound later that evening, the project coordinator smiled when she learned I’d visited Engreda. 

“Yes, they’re very happy there. They tell us the water tastes better than coconut milk.” 

I had to agree.

- Scott Harrison, charity: water

charity: water supported 38 village water systems in India in 2008, and hopes to fund at least 50 more in 2009. To support a village in India, you can donate here. 100% of your money will be matched with villagers’ labor to transform communities with clean drinking water.

A special thank you to Inmarsat and Evosat for making our communication from the field possible by donating satellite internet service and equipment.

Happy New Year and Thank You.

When we started charity: water a little over two years ago, the first thing we did was build six wells in Uganda and take pictures of them to prove the work being done with your money.

We’ve been doing that ever since.

Two and a half years on, your generosity has helped us raise more than $8 million and fund 1,030 water projects in 13 developing nations. You’ve helped us believe that it might just be possible to bring clean and safe drinking water to every single person on earth.

This Holiday season, we want to do what we do best – we want to tell you one more story before the year ends.

Gasi Springs, Ethiopia.

When we first showed you pictures from Gasi Springs in March, it was a contaminated mud pit. Women huddled ankle deep in toxic water most of us wouldn’t dare step in, let alone drink. But the people here didn’t have a choice.

We immediately committed to the project, and asked our partners to expedite the work to get Gasi the clean water they so desperately needed. Hundreds of you donated. Hundreds of you gave and with your help, the mud is now gone.

When I visited Gasi again a few months later, our small group was greeted with cheering and dancing. The women of the village threw popcorn, the men beat on drums and sang. Clean water gushed from the newly protected spring at Gasi. The solution cost $5,000, and served 328 people.



Your continued generosity allows us to keep going. On January 1, I’ll travel to see completed projects you helped us fund in India, Bangladesh and Ethiopia throughout 2008. In the coming year, we’ll continue proving wells and looking for opportunites to serve.

Thank you for your continued support - we wish you many blessings this Holiday Season!

- Scott Harrison and the team at charity: water

charity: ball 2008 raised $460,000

1,200 attended the 2008 charity: ball in New York City on December 15th, and more than $450,000 was raised in one night.