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ThinkSocial Awards: charity:water “Bringing clean drinking water to people in areas without”
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Name: charity: water
Nominated category: Organization
URL: http://www.charitywater.org
“Bringing clean drinking water to people in areas without”
Area: Non-profit, fundraising, advocacy
About:
charity: water is a non-profit bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.
Description:
Through multiple projects, charity: water fundraises to build freshwater wells, provide rainwater catchments and sand filters, and other initiatives to provide clean drinking water for the 1.1 billion people around world who go without. For its “Born in September” campaign — inspired by charity: water’s founder, Scott Harrison asking friends on his September birthday to donate money, which in turn went to a refugee camp to build wells — the organization is asking that people give up their birthday, wedding and anniversary gifts and have friends donate money to charity: water instead. The organization has created a mycharity: water part of the web site, where those interested can create their own fundraising pages and raise money, any time of the year.
How does it all work? Charity: water doesn’t actually dig the wells, or procure rainwater catchments. Instead, through the site’s donation pages and rather straight-forward-ly-named donation campaigns like “Water For Schools,” charity: water passes on donations to its partner organizations, who then buy the necessary supplies to build wells. As the umbrella organization, charity: water also sends photographers along with charity: water staffers to document the projects in order to share them with the community of folks who donated.
charity: water shows visitors to the Web site “why water?” through video, photos and other media the reasons behind the cause. And the proof? They also uses photos, video and GPS coordinate plotted in Google Earth to show each well built as a result of the organization’s efforts. There’s also space on the Web site that charts the progress of ongoing projects in easily digestible shorthand (using little symbols for water towers and wells).
Since charity: water was founded in three years ago, it’s completed 1,247 water projects and aided roughly 650,000 people in places ranging from Cote D’Ivoire to Bangladesh to Haiti. According to the mycharity: water main page, there is currently 7760 members of the online community, 88 projects, and roughly $443,000 raised to date.
The Basics:
WHO: charity: water
WHAT: This non-profit fundraises to provide clean drinking water to people worldwide who go without.
WHERE: All over the world. charity: water, through donations funneled to partner organizations, have built wells and provided water purification devices in Bangladesh, Haiti, Cote D’Ivoire and elsewhere.
HOW to get involved: Via donation pages on charitywater.org and volunteer opportunities; stay tuned via Twitter and Facebook.
What other people are saying:
New York Times column by Nick Kristof
Plus various write ups by CNN, Vanity Fair, New York magazine, USA Today, all accessible via:
http://www.charitywater.org/media/press.php
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Posted in: Case studies, Human Rights, Non-profit, Organization, awards | Tagged: advocacy, charitywater, donations, fundraising, Non-profit, refugees, water
