Before The Water

Scott Harrison, founder of charity:water, shares this story:

"I recently had the chance to visit charity:water's very first project. It was a well that we had funded on my thirty-first birthday and then built in the IDP camp of Bobi, Uganda.

"The sprawling camp of 31,000 people had cleared out, leaving a small village of about 500. And while our old well as banged up from a decade of use, clean water still flowed. It was incredible to see. We calculated the handle must've been pumped about 50 million times.

"When I looked around at all the kids in the village who were 10 and younger, I realized they'd never had to drink dirty water in their lives. A simple piece of infrastructure had broken a cycle of disease and despair for generations to come.

"When I go on trips like this and meet with the people we serve, they often talk about their lives as having two distinct periods: 'before the water' and 'after the water.'"

- Scott Harrison, "There's Hope Even When There's No Finish Line," Relevant magazine, Nov-Dec 2018