Every morning, we wake up, expecting to see pure water pour from our stainless steel faucets, while halfway around the world, children, as young as 9 years old, have to walk for hours just to bring home dirty, germ-infested water to drink as necessity.
What's wrong with this picture?
Last week, which seems centuries ago, Harker was blessed by the visit of a man, a man who changed how I see everything today. Scott Harrison started off small, a novel photographer in the making, but with big aspirations and a magnanimous heart, he instigated his own kind of butterfly effect, touching the lives of people, young and old. What Harrison is doing and has been doing to this day hit a chord within me: those little kids, who should be in elementary school like I had been, are instead forced to settle for the mediocre just to live.
So, I tried to do a little something with the purchasing of the charity water band (thanks April haha). What I'm trying to say is that in order to change something, it's not about the extravagant, philanthropic gestures that you make, but the thought and the heart behind it all. With each dollar, a well can be built, a well that can provide clean water for a whole village. Every little step counts, even if it's just 5 dollars.
I mean, who knows? You could change lives, even if it's just one.
Sorry to interject with my own opinion, but Scott Harrison -- just in his demeanor and his opinion fueled interaction with the needy, causes me to feel like Charity : Water really isn't an organization but an ego. He said himself in his presentation, "I wanted to make something that was my own." This kind of thinking is unbecoming of a *charity* though maybe not for a small business. But in addition, he seemed completely unwilling to tango with bureaucracy and seek funding from national, multinational, or international organizations.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, he basically conned thousands of people into buying 20$ bottles of water and 5 dollar rubber bracelets with fancy logos and pictures of dirty water. He claimed a 1:1 ratio, a ratio that beats even UNICEF's impressive .89 cent donation rate, claiming that having a board of directors/trustees paying for all of the aesthetics of running the organization was completely separate from your donation. But what makes the board's dollar any different from the average joe's dollar? He sold us all on the pretext that we were going to be making a direct impact on the people of Africa (Something you already do when you donate money ... ... ...)
IMO, having so many tiny organizations is comparable to having a thousand toddlers running in different directions, they lack the power, authority, and ability to transcend international borders and seek international funding (from organizations like the G8, World Bank, or regional superpowers.)
wow your actually posting again! haha i miss you lots. hurry and come back from chicago...and about your little profile thing...who likes to write? lol
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