Letters to my girls: Launching Water.org

July 16, 2009

Today, Gary White and I launched the nonprofit organization Water.org which is striving to provide safe water and sanitation to developing countries. We are starting in Africa, Central America, and South Asia, but I really hope people help Gary and I take this effort further. All of our projects are demand-driven and community-led. This means that the communities approach our local partners and that the communities themselves are involved owners every step of the way. Ownership increases sustainability and ensures that solutions last in the long run. Not surprisingly, it is often women leading the charge. Because women and girls spend most of their day walking miles to gather clean water, they miss out on many valuable educational opportunities. Therefore, women are really rallying their communities to organize and get small loans for water and sanitation. I understand their drive for change because I feel that same drive within myself. When Gary and I visited Ethopia recently, we visited a community where 6,000 people were sharing one well. Some people were standing inside of the well, while others were throwing tin cans tied with ropes into the hole. They were working so hard for this water, but I knew it would be the reason some of them were sick by the end of the day. We talked to a group of kids at the well, and as they held up the plastic bottles of brown water to show me what they’d have to drink at school. To me, their drinking water looked more like chocolate milk. I couldn’t imagine how their parents felt, being forced to give their child contaminated water and knowing it would likely make them sick but not having any alternative. Becoming a father to you girls really made this issue strike a chord with me because I would never want you to have to give up your dreams to focus on finding clean water or have to give you dirty water knowing it would make you sick. These problems are very real, but I know if I work hard at creating solutions, the world will be a better place for you and your kids. That is what keeps me going.