Natural Heroes Scott Harrison: Quenching the Thirst of Those in Need
This month’s Natural Hero, Scott Harrison, is the founder of charity: water. He is a New York resident whose work takes him around the world, bringing life-giving water to deprived people everywhere.
What is charity: water? We’re a New York City-based nonprofit, dedicated to providing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations around the world. We give away 100 percent of the money we raise publicly.
Every penny goes directly to fund the water projects in the field. Photos of all our projects are available on our website and publicly through GPS coordinates on GoogleEarth.com, to promote transparency. It’s been a quick start for us. In two-and-a-half years, we’ve raised $9 million and funded 1,240 water projects, which will give 650,000 people clean water.What brought you to your work with charity: water?
I lived a very selfish 10 years in New York City, promoting nightclubs and fashion parties. Then, as the result of a faith experience I had when I was 28, during a particularly decadent vacation in South America, I decided to throw my old life away and dedicate myself to serving God and the poor.I found an opportunity to serve on a hospital ship in Liberia, West Africa, leaving behind a life of $15 cocktails and $350 bottles of vodka.
On my third day in Africa, I saw 7,000 people standing in line outside a stadium, waiting for their chance to get medical help. We couldn’t possibly help more than 2,000. I started crying that day, and inside I guess I never stopped. I learned that unsafe water and lack of sanitation causes 80 percent of the disease in the world. So, 10 years of nightlife, two years of volunteering and not wanting to turn my back on these problems, these people in crisis—that’s what led me to start charity: water. It’s my life’s work.It’s relatively easy to determine need.
How do you target priorities?
There are approximately one billion people on the planet today without access to clean water. We focus on helping them, what we call the bottom billion. These people live in Africa, India, Bangladesh, Southeast Asia and Central and South America. We look for opportunities of great need in these countries and team up with local, “on the ground,” organizations to drill wells, protect the springs and construct rainwater harvesting solutions. We have 18 partners in our efforts in these countries. They define local need through triage.
I just returned from Ethiopia. Women there set out at 5 a.m. to walk five hours to rivers, where they dig water out of muddy riverbanks and then carry 40 pounds of that dirty water on their heads back another five hours to their villages. It’s not a choice. It’s all they have.
The billion people we are trying to serve don’t even have five gallons of clean water every day. The goal is to give every person five gallons of clean water each day. The average American uses 150 gallons of clean water a day. But, it’s not as simple as us turning off the tap in New York and someone in Africa getting clean water.
Have global warming and other environmental changes affected the water crisis?
Yes, global warming affects the poor more than anyone else. People everywhere are dependent on rain for crops, and those rains don’t come exactly when they used to any more. Sometimes, they don’t come at all. Growing food and eating can become extremely challenging.
We’re facing water shortages, even in the United States. When they designed the Hoover Dam, they never thought the water level would recede by half. That’s about to happen, and the engineers are planning to move the water intake valves to the bottom of the dam.That’s the irony. We’re good here at pulling water from the ground for manufacturing and bottled water, but Third World countries don’t have that technology. Many of them are sitting on untapped sources that could keep them alive. They just don’t have the money or technology to access it.
What impact have current challenges in the economy had on your fundraising?
At this point, more than 50,000 people have supported charity: water with donations. That’s not a small group of people. We focus on small donations; small amounts of money that people still have to give. Twenty dollars can help one person get clean water. Five thousand dollars can bring clean water to an entire village.
It’s a fine line to walk. There’s no comparison between the suffering and hardship we see around the world and what most Americans experience. Sure, people here are losing their jobs and cars and homes; it’s a terrible situation. But, those bottom billion people in the world, who don’t have clean water, would trade places in a heartbeat for the life we have here.
Are you lobbying for government support of your work? There are a bunch of organizations already working on that end of the problem who are better suited to spending their time in D.C. We’re a practical, grassroots organization. As a rule, we don’t like sitting through long meetings talking about policy and what we’re going to do. We just like doing it. I don’t think anyone in our group would have the patience for dealing with the bureaucracy our government has become.
Has the situation improved since you started your work or are you, literally, just treading water?
It’s getting better. The United Nations has released figures that show the number of people without water is now at 900 million. That’s 200 million below the figure of 1.1 billion previously documented. So, the collective work of all the governments and rescue groups appears to be moving in the right direction.
Does charity: water have a master plan?In five years, we’d like to be solving 1 percent of the problem each year. We’ll need $150 million every year to accomplish that goal. We can no longer count on corporate donations or government grants to fund this work. It’s going to take millions of people around the world to give whatever small amounts they have to make it happen.Does Scott Harrison have a master plan?I’m going to be doing this as long as I live.
For more information about charity: water, or to make a contribution, visit CharityWater.org. If you have a “Natural Hero” in your life, go to NaturalHeroes@NuGreenCity.com and tell us about that special someone you know who’s making our planet a better place to live.
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