Photo courtesy of Charity:Water
Who inspires you?
I’m talking real inspiration. Not the locker room, rah-rah kind of fleeting inspiration, but the kind that turns your life around. The kind that motivates you to look deeply within yourself and compare your life to the world around you. The kind that makes you analyze your own self-purpose and examine what value you’re adding in this short breath we call a lifetime.
Who’s that person in your life? I have a few.
There’s spiritual figures, with the man Jesus Christ topping that list. (And I promise you, I’m not namedropping here because it’s the thing to do.) I actually believe it…now, anyways. After a lifetime of hearing about him, I really only started getting to know him in the last couple of years.
There’s also authors: C.S. Lewis and Brennan Manning. These guys helped correct the poorly shaped God I was told about as a kid. They both wrote with such vulnerability and regularly confessed they hadn’t figured it all out. I leaned into their writings at very raw moments of my life.
And there’s Scott Harrison, the only living contemporary on the list. He founded Charity:Water — a non-profit group bring clean and safe drinking water around the world planet — after living a self-describe “polluted” lifestyle. I can fully relate to Scott’s conservative, uber-religious upbringing, and I’m starting to relate to his passion to do some tangible good in the world.
He’s one of the reasons I partner with Charity: Water each September and October for my Aperture Effect campaign. He’s the real deal…as are the people who work there. They don’t just play the part. They are the part. They are the dirtied, cracked and tired hands and feet who are helping sustain and change the lives of people in serious need.
They bring clean, safe water to devastated regions around the world, but they do even more than that. Every time a drink’s poured out, they’re reshaping a community. They’re transforming the people in those communities. Enhancing the health, safety and self-esteem of women in those communities, and giving their kids a new future.
This year, all funds raised will help bring clean water to people in the Sahel Region of Mali and Niger — a narrow strip of land in Africa just below the Sahara Desert. Having access to clean water in this area devastated by drought and famine is extremely rare. We’ll help build sustainable, clean water projects that can transform lives, especially for women and girls.
All that inspires me…and you inspire me.
Your giving has been so overwhelming to me the past two years. In 2012, we raised $1,578 donated. In 2013, we raised $4,389. And this year, I’m raising our bar up to $5,000 — which would give 142 people clean water!
If you’re inspired too, let’s see what we can do together! Find out more about how you can help this year.
Get Inspired by Scott’s Story…