Charity: Water Founder Gives Up Party Life for Poverty Cause

In our less selfish states of being, there are those of us who often speak and think about leaving everything behind to help those in need but never actually acting upon those impulses. And there are those who are like Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity: Water.

In 2004, after having been an extremely successful club promoter in New York City for over a decade (e.g. he was paid $2,000 a month separately by Bacardi and Budweiser, just to drink their beverages at parties), Mr. Harrison had a spiritual crisis/awakening. While on vacation in South America submerged in the luxuries of servants, private planes, and $10,000 hands of baccarat, Mr. Harrison became aware of how miserable he felt in what he had thought was to be the “perfect life.”

“I felt soulless,” he shared in one interview. “I was the most selfish person I knew.”

Processing the question, “what would the opposite of my life look like?” soon after his realization of how trifling his life had become, Mr. Harrison decided to leave the busy streets of New York City for the poverty stricken coasts of West Africa.

Mr. Harrison volunteered with Mercy Ships, a Christian aid organization that mobilizes volunteer doctors to perform surgeries in third world countries, as a photojournalist. Dealing with a sense of shock having to share a room small room on the ship and eating cafeteria food rather than living the luxurious life he left behind in New York, Mr. Harrison’s world was further and thoroughly rocked when he first set foot on the coast of West Africa.

In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Harrison recalled, “The first person I photographed was a 14-year-old boy named Alfred, choking on a four-pound benign tumor in his mouth, filling up his whole mouth… He was suffocating on his own face. I just went into the corner and sobbed.”

Besides coming into contact the struggles of poverty stricken peoples in West Africa, Mr. Harrison was also exposed to the dedication and hard work of professional doctors who gave up their comfortable lifestyles and holiday time to commit to serving those in need. With the inspiration he got from the dedicated doctors on Mercy Ship and capturing the horrid realities of the poor living conditions that exists in the world, Mr. Harrison returned to New York City two years later with a desire to bring about change.

From his experience with Mercy Ships, Mr. Harrison learned that a major problem the people he photographed faced was the finding clean water. He saw children being kept from going to school because they had to travel hours at a time to get water from a well. He photographed many who were so desperate for water that they used water from a well in which two children had drowned in. He saw first hand how dirty water had caused major health problems for all peoples in West Africa. Because of this need he saw, when Mr. Harrison returned to New York City, he devised a plan to create a charity providing clean water in poor countries.

Mr. Harrison’s plan eventually became charity:water. Using the skills of his previous occupation as a club promoter, Mr. Harrison has been able to make his charity highly successful through creative marketing schemes and taking advantage of social networking technology such as Twitter (the organization has over half a million followers on Twitter). With the social networking talents of Mr. Harrison, Charity: water has been able to raise over $10 million from 50,000 individuals and has served nearly one million people in Africa and Asia since its inception three years ago.

New York City buses have given the charity free ad space to put up charity: water posters. Stores in prime locations in NYC such as Saks Fifth Avenue have given the organization a large stretch of their window space to put displays that educate people about the issues of clean water. The attention Mr. Harrison has been able to bring  to issues of water doesn’t seem to be letting up either as various TV channels and magazine such as CNN, Elle, Vanity Fair, NY Times, and many more have picked on the work of charity: water.

Charity: water’s success also derives from its commitment to making sure every penny they receive goes directly to the various projects its donors intended the money for. The organization has been able to fulfill this commitment by getting 500 of its most dedicated donors to cover all its administration fees.

The charity has also made it their priority to ensure that donors see the specific impact of their contributions. The organization does this by using technology such as Google Earth and G.P.S. trackers to allow their donors to pin point where their donations contributed to. Charity: water is currently also working on getting a website set up in which even the smallest donations going to whichever project at the time can be tracked online.

Mr. Harrison and charity: water’s philosophy on giving is that it should be a joy filled affair with an infectious quality to it that can bring people together to bring change.

“Guilt has never been part of it,” he said to the New York Times. “It’s excitement instead, presenting people with an opportunity — ‘you have an amazing chance to build a well!’ ”

As he writes on the charity: water website, Mr. Harrison view on charity is that, “Charity is practical. It’s sometimes easy, more often inconvenient, but always necessary. It’s the ability to use one’s position of influence, relative wealth and power to affect lives for the better. charity is singular and achievable.”

Sources: here and here.