Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1134: 700 Million People Live Without Basic Access to Clean and Safe Drinking Water! Scott Harrison

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

After a decade of indulging his darkest vices as a nightclub promoter, Scott declared spiritual, moral, and emotional bankruptcy. He spent two years on a hospital ship off the coast of Liberia, saw the effects of dirty water firsthand, and came back to New York City on a mission. Upon returning to NYC in 2006, having seen the effects of dirty water firsthand, Scott turned his full attention to the global water crisis and the (then) 1.1 billion people living without access to clean water. He established a small core team in a tiny Manhattan apartment and created charity: water. Sixteen years later, with the help of more than 1 million supporters worldwide, charity: water has raised over $740 million and funded over 137,000 water projects in 29 countries. When completed, those projects will provide over 17.4 million people with clean, safe drinking water. Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hello, friends. So one of my favorite things about Theology in Raw is engaging with my Patreon community. So we're going to do something special with my community that I've actually never done before. My family and I, we are going to record the first ever, what do we call it? Sprinkle family theology in the Raw episode where we will respond to questions sent in by my Patreon supporters. I'm actually kind of nervous about this episode because I've been encouraging my wife and kids to be super honest with whatever question comes in, and I'm honestly a little scared about what they're going to say. So we're going to do it. It's scheduled. We're going to roll the dice with this one, and we're going to release this bonus episode exclusively to the Theology in Raw Patreon community in early December. If you want access

to this crazy episode, then you need to first join the Patreon community at patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw and joining Patreon not only helps support the theology in the raw ministry, but it also gets you access to all kinds of premium content, monthly zoom chats, special written content, monthly bonus Q and A episodes, and much, much more. Again, that's patreon.com forward slash Theology in a Raw. I will see you there. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in a Raw. My guest today is Scott Harrison, who is the founder and CEO of Charity Water, an organization aimed at bringing clean water to every person on the planet. He's also

the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Thirst, a story of redemption, compassion, and a mission to bring clean water to the world. Scott's got an amazing story. I know a lot of you probably already know who he is. Maybe you're familiar with Charity Water. It's an incredible, incredible organization. He's got a pretty amazing story, which he tells in this podcast conversation. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Scott Harrison. Scott, thanks so much for being on Theology in Raw. I've been looking forward to this conversation for, well, a few weeks now. And as I told you offline, Charity Water has kind of taken over my household in many ways. So thank you for what you do. Thank you for this time. And why don't you

introduce yourself for those who don't know about Charity Water, Scott Harrison, who are you and what is it that you do? Sure. Well, I have been started an organization called Charity Water. We're a nonprofit. I started in New York City about 17 years ago. And we have a very simple mission, which is to try to bring clean water to every single person on the planet. And sadly, you know, as we record this, this morning, there are 703 million human beings around the world that are drinking dirty, diseased, contaminated water. So it's about, there's about one in 10 people alive, youased, contaminated water. So it's about one in 10 people alive don't have access to this thing that I'm sure so many listeners,

like me at times, just take for granted, this thing that we've always known of clean water. So we work across 29 different nations. We fund about 14 water technologies across the portfolio. So everything from, you know, bio sand filters to drilling wells to these huge, you know, multimillion dollar gravity fed solar systems connecting networks of villages. So we're agnostic when it comes to the solution. But the great thing about, you know, now almost two decades in clean water is that we know how to help every single person alive. There's no one anywhere in the world where we're scratching our head saying just couldn't get to them, you know, couldn't help them. And look, I'm sure we both know people who are working on thorny disease, you know, issues, right? Trying to solve ALS or Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.

My mom died of pancreatic cancer in a few months and people had no idea what to do with late stage pancreatic. But the beauty is water is not like that. We just, sadly, we haven't created the will to solve this problem. We haven't mobilized the resources or the community. But it is nice knowing it's a solvable problem. It does not have to be this way. Wow. I got a bunch of questions about the current work you're doing. Can you tell, give us the backstory. How did you get into this? Did you just wake up one day and want to provide clean water to people? Well, no. So it's certainly not the most traditional path. I grew up in a very conservative Christian

family. My mom became an invalid when I was four years old. There was a tragic carbon monoxide gas leak in our house. My dad and I got sick. We eventually recovered, but really, my mom, her immune system irreparably shut down. From from that point on, her body was unable to process anything chemical. So she kind of lived in a bubble. She lived in isolation. I joke, sadly, that I have 40 plus years of experience with 3M's family of masks. From the time of the accident, I never really saw my mom's face again. She was always wearing a version of an N95. So I was brought up, I was an only child, caregiver role, played piano in the Sunday school. And I didn't smoke, I didn't drink,

I didn't sleep around, I didn't cuss. I played by the rules rules and if you'd asked me as a teenager uh i was going to be a good christian doctor when i when i grew up and i was going to cure my mom and other people like her well uh it didn't work out that way and at 18 you know i took a pretty big detour and really lived out uh the the classic cliche uh prodigal son story. You know, woke up one day and said, now it's my turn. It is my turn to go have sex and smoke and drink and, you know, dabble with-

Get it out of your system. Go have, yeah, go live like a- Well, you know, the pornography, you know, and I realized that there was kind of this very unique opportunity in New York City to rebel in style if you became a nightclub promoter. So you can imagine to the horror of my group and the little old ladies who'd been praying for Scott Harrison, I kind of go rogue and spend 10 years, the next 10 years, really just most selfish, hedonistic, debauched lifestyle, which looked great on the outside. I'm working at 40 different clubs

over the course of my career. I drive a BMW. I've got a grand piano in my New York City apartment. I date girls that are on the cover of fashion magazines and I'm flying on other people's private planes to these exotic vacation locations. But it was really an empty existence. And at 28 years old, there was this moment where half my body went numb. And I remember being in my loft in Midtown, walking over to the sink, turning on the water, hot, where I could see it steaming, and just running my hand to my arm underneath it, and I couldn't feel anything. And I thought something was very wrong with me. Maybe it was a brain tumor, maybe some incurable disease.

some incurable disease. And it really just led me very quickly to assess my life and the path that I'd been on, the legacy that I was leaving, which was actually a destructive legacy, and led me to question some of that stuff that I was taught in church. Did I believe in heaven and hell? stuff that I was taught in church. Did I believe in heaven and hell? If I still did, I was pretty sure where I was going. The once saved, always saved theology didn't feel like it would work too well after the way I'd lived for 10 years. So really started this exploration to kind of rediscover faith, rediscover morality, you know, maybe in a different way as a 28-year-old. I got this kind of crazy idea to start life over, sell everything I owned, and see if I could volunteer for one year on a humanitarian mission and see if I could be useful. Did I have any skills that could be useful to others? Well, I remember I'd grabbed this.

I'd kind of gone on this journey. I'd grabbed a Bible. I'd grabbed a bottle of Dewar's, a carton of Marlboro Reds. I had rented this car and just headed north from New York City aimlessly. I didn't know where I was going. And I eventually wound up in Moosehead Lake in Maine in this little dial-up internet cafe. I remember these old Dell computers that were stacked high. And I applied there to volunteer for 10 or so

of the famous humanitarian organizations I'd heard of, certainly had not donated to, but had heard of. World Vision and Save the Children and and doctors without borders and Oxfam and red cross salvation army. And, and maybe it shouldn't have been to my surprise, but, but certainly to my, um, you know, it's my sadness. Nobody would take me. So I was denied by all these organizations because it turns out that none of them are looking for accomplished nightclub promoters, doctors without borders. It turns out is looking for accomplished nightclub promoters. Doctors Without Borders, it turns out, is looking for medical professionals to go. So I had gone to NYU part-time. I'd graduated with a communications degree, kind of C-minus student, barely graduated.

But I had dusted this degree off and sent it to one organization called Mercy Ships that was operating a hospital ship off the coast of West Africa. And I said, they had this position open for a photojournalist, for a writer and a photographer. And I said, well, I can do both of these things. I'm a hobby photographer. I like taking pictures of models and beautiful buildings in Prague and Paris and Milan. And I'm a pretty good writer. And I actually have this degree that I've never used to show for it. So as the story goes, the organization saw my resume

and actually discarded it at first. But then they were about to start this mission. And they had not yet filled this position. So they had to go through the discarded resumes. They found mine, and they agreed to meet me. And I remember that was the moment where I had to convince them that I really was trying to change my life. I really was trying to turn over a new leaf and that I would not throw any wild parties on their hospital ship or corrupt any of the young nurses. And I successfully was able to convince them that I would not do any of these things. And in a very, very short time, my life changed so radically as I had this moment where I sail away to a new life,

a completely different life. And I remember going out with a bang that night. I smoked, you know, two or three packs of Marlboro Reds and, you know, I got drunk. I'm like, this is, you know, at least I did finish well. But, you But I made this commitment that I would never touch drugs again. I would never smoke again. I would never look at another pornographic image again. I really wanted to clean up my life and see where this might take me. And there was something nice about being on a ship with a bunch of humanitarians where none of that stuff was cool anyway. Yeah. It's not like doctors are smoking 40 cigarettes a day, right?

So that really started this amazing journey in West Africa, where we were going to a country called Liberia, which at the time I'd never even heard of. I couldn't have found it on a map, but it was this post-war environment where a brutal civil war of 14 years had just ended. The warlord Charles Taylor had fled and there was no electricity, no running water, no sewage, no mail system in the country. And most importantly, in our context, there was one doctor for every 50,000 people living there. Here in America, we have a doctor for every couple hundred of us. So the work was really needed that these doctors were providing. And I was just going to be responsible for documenting everything that happened on and off the ship for the medical library and all the patients that would come through surgery. And it was an

amazing kind of new beginning for me. Is that when you saw the issue of clean water as well? Did that come right away or did that come kind of down the road? Yeah. Well, during the first year, I mean, I remember there was this really cathartic moment for me. It was my third day in West Africa. And before the ship had brought this huge, before the ship came into the port, a small advance team had flyered the country advertising the coming of the doctors. And they posted these banners that said, if you have a facial tumor, if you have a cleft lip or a cleft palate, if you have been burned by rebel soldiers during the war and you need facial reconstruction or body reconstruction,

if you have flesh-eating disease, I mean, stuff that I'd never even heard of, turn up on this day and our doctors will triage you and, you know, we'll help as many people as possible. And I'll never forget, you know, waking up at five o'clock in the morning, my third day in Africa, grabbing my Nikon D1X cameras, putting on the hospital scrubs. And I'd learned that we had 1,500 available surgery slips to hand out. I remember just thinking, are there 1,500 sick people with these bizarre conditions? I mean, 1,500 people with tumors on their face? I'd learned that the government had given us the soccer stadium in the center of the city to triage people. About 5.30 in the morning, our convoy of Land Rovers snaked through the city and turned up at the stadium.

There were more than 5,000 people standing in the parking lot waiting for us to open the doors. And that hit me really hard. We're going to send 3,000 sick people home with no chance to see a doctor. We don't have enough doctors. We don't have enough resources. So that was a really difficult moment. I later learned many of these people had walked from neighboring countries. They'd walked for more than a month with their children just in the hope of seeing a doctor or a surgeon. the surgery process and just watching lives completely transformed and watching these doctors save lives. And when the year ended, I wasn't sure what was next. So I just signed up for a second year. And that's really where I got off of the ship, out of the city and into the rural areas. And I saw the water problem for the first time with my own eyes. I remember just watching children drink from green, viscous, algae-filled swamps, just kind of saying to myself,

well, no wonder everybody's sick. I mean, if the most basic need for health is not met, and people are poisoning themselves with dirty water, no wonder we have 5,000 people gathered outside a soccer stadium. And I kind of learned two things. Half the country was actually drinking unsafe water and didn't have access to sanitation. And according to the World Health Organization, half the disease was because people were drinking dirty water and didn't have access to sanitation. So for me, it was uncovering the question kind of behind the question of why are all these people sick? Well, it's because they don't have the most basic need met.

And I remember showing my photos to Dr. Gary Parker, who was the chief medical officer for more than 20 years on the ship. And he just kind of simply challenged me to go out and do something about it. You know, you've seen this, it seems like you're passionate. Why don't you go and try to bring clean water to everybody on earth? And I was 30 at the time. So I was like, okay, I'll try and do that. I mean, if you told me to jump off a bridge, I might have. I mean, he was kind of the highly venerated, esteemed moral compass of the ship. And it was really that simple. At the end of the second tour, I came back to Manhattan. I was completely broke. So I started living on a closet floor of a friend's

apartment for free rent. And I was telling everybody, I'm going to go on a mission to bring clean and safe drinking water to everybody on earth and help as many people before I die. Wow. That moment was 17 years ago. So what were the next... How do you start an organization? I mean, your organization is massive. What were the early days? What did that look like? I mean, um, well, I think I had the advantage of not knowing anything about how to start a charity, um, or run a charity. Uh, people don't believe this, but I actually bought nonprofits for dummies, you know,

one of the yellow dummy books, like actually there's actually, but there is Nonprofits for Dummies book. In fact, I continue to recommend this to others. I mean, it's a great... I had the advantage of knowing everyday people who went to nightclubs or worked at Chase Bank or Sephora or MTV VH1 at the time. They were in the entertainment business in some way. And as I talked to people about what I'd seen, because I had been emailing my whole club list that I had amassed over 10 years, all of my photos and stories from Africa. So there were definitely some unsubscribes in the beginning, but people were following this journey and they were really interested in the transformative work these doctors were doing in Africa. So I came back with a little bit of credibility and having been there for two years

and having told these stories through photos and video and through words. So people thought the mission of getting people clean water was a noble idea, but I realized so many of them were cynical and skeptical about giving money to charities. And everybody seemed to have some sort of horror story they could pull out of their back pocket of charity going wrong. A charity that embezzled the money or was nepotistic and had hired cousins and aunts and uncles far removed and put them all on the payroll. And as I kind of probed this, you know, I learned, well, two things, 70% of Americans pulled by NYU actually found, they found 70% of Americans believe charities waste their money.

Wow. So that's, that's surprising to people. Americans are known as unbelievably generous, right? As we compare American giving to other nations. But seven out of 10 people think charities are not good stewards of those dollars. 42% of people that were polled by USA Today said, you know, we just don't trust charities. So I thought, you know, maybe there is a way to, you know, and again, nobody was using the word disrupt 20 years ago, but maybe there's a way to do something different, to reinvent or reimagine the way a charity could be structured, the way it could act and behave and report back to its donor community on impact. And I really just had a couple simple ideas at the beginning.

ideas at the beginning. The first was, what if I could tell the public that 100% of whatever they might give to help people get clean water would go directly to those people, to the field, that they would pay no overhead, no staff salaries, no office rent, no toner for the Epson copy machine, no flights to the field. And the way that I did that is I just opened up two separately audited bank accounts and kind of raised my hand and said, I'm going to go out there and do my best to raise all of this unsexy overhead money from a small group of business leaders, board members, people who understand there are these costs in an organization, but it would never be the public's problem. So that turned out to be incredibly differentiating. And the reason why for many years people told us they were giving, sometimes even giving their first charitable gift

was this 100% model, which we still today, 17 years later, have two separately audited bank accounts. And about 130 families pay the overhead so that millions of donors can give in the purest way possible. So that was kind of number one. Number two was then, well, if money's not fungible, if we're not grouping it all together in one bank account, then why don't we build technology that tracks these donations and show people where their money went and who was impacted by those gifts? One of the first things we did was become the first charity in the world just to geolocate every completed water project on Google Earth and then Google Maps. So, I mean, this dates me, we started before there was Google Maps. Okay. Because I remember meeting the founder at a conference. So, you know, we became,

you know, the idea there was people could see the satellite images of where their money was going, as these projects were being built, they were delivering clean water and life to people, and just wanting to build this radically transparent organization. Now, the third pillar was really around brand. Now, I remember, you know, being this 30-year-old kid looking around at charities and just saying, where's the Apple? You know, where's the Nike? Where is the Virgin? Where's the creativity? Where's the magic? Where's the inspiration? You know, I saw a lot of shame and guilt. I saw a lot of old marketing, right?

The kids with sad eyes and slow motion and a fly lands on the kid's forehead and locks eyes with the camera as the appeal comes up. But the brands that I was most inspired by didn't market that way. I mean, Nike didn't go out and tell Americans they were fat and lazy to stop eating Doritos and go buy their clothes and go exercise, right? Nike told stories of people overcoming adversity, people kind of finding within themselves more than they thought possible to go out and achieve. And that was inspiring.

And people would say, well, maybe I could go and run one block, right? Maybe I could even run one kilometer one day. So I really thought very intentionally about trying to build this epic, imaginative, inspiring brand that was based on hope and opportunity and not guilt. So those were the three big ideas. Give away 100%, prove where their money goes, build a brand. And then the fourth was just, I believe for the work to be culturally appropriate and sustainable in the long run,

it would need to be led by the locals in each of these countries that we worked. Like no guy like me from Manhattan should be running around Uganda with a hard hat on pretending that I know how to drill a well. Our job would be to go and find the local skilled hydrogeologists in Uganda, get them the training, the resources, the additional rigs, the additional support trucks that they needed, and help scale those local organizations. And if we were successful creating thousands of local jobs in each of these countries as we grew and scaled. And they'd also be the ones getting the credit. They'd also be the ones leading their

communities and leading their countries forward into the future. So I kind of put all of that together. And the best idea I had 17 years ago was to throw myself a birthday party in a nightclub. So that was day one of Charity Water. And I had gotten a club donated during Fashion Week in New York City. I was turning 31 on September 7th. And I just, I invited every single person that I'd ever met. I mean, I blasted every email that I had

and said, come to my 31st birthday party. And on the way in, there was this big plexi box and you had to donate $20 to get inside. And on the way in, there was this big plexi box and you had to donate $20 to get inside. And at the end of the night, we'd collected $15,000 in that box. And I don't get to tell this story much, but I remember that there was this wad of $500 in cash and it was from a weed dealer. And I remember he came up to me and he said, I have never given to a charity in my entire life, but I know that 100% of this $500 is going to help someone. And that would not be a future market for charity water. But it kind of told us something was working. This idea of restoring

faith, this 100% model, this issue of water would be compelling. So at the end of the night, I remember we carefully photographed the $15,000. We double counted it. A bunch of people signed stuff, took it down to the bank. And then we built our first well in Northern Uganda in an internally displaced person's camp. We wish we had the resources to do more, but we did one. And then we sent the photos and the GPS coordinates and video back to those 700 people. And we said, you came, you gave $20, and here is the impact of those collective donations that you were a part of. And again, we just realized this was so rare, organizations closing the loop, that people said, well, when's the next event? How do I bring my

friends? What's the next action I can take with your organization? I would imagine that, I don't want to say easy sell, but kind of. I mean, most human beings with some kind of moral compass can really get on board with what you're doing, right? Especially the way you go about it. You're showing them exactly where their money goes. The 100% giving goes to the actual cause. I mean, these are things that most human beings I meet who aren't even religious would say that's a good thing. I would like to help that. Have you experienced that? Has it been kind of an easy sell for lack of better terms? I don't, you know, I don't know if that's the right language, but.

So Preston, when people understand the issue, we have them. When you understand that if you don't have water, it's a radically impacts health. It impacts women and girls, you know, who are wasting hundreds of millions of hours walking for dirty water. It impacts education as half of the schools in the developing world don't have water for their students, don't have toilets for their students. It impacts the local economy, all this money spent on health care costs. Again, this wasted time that could be income generating that's not realized. So once we tell the story, and it's also visual. We have a video online that's gotten over 100 million views across platforms.

You can go to YouTube and type in The Spring or just Charity Water. When you see people, when you see children drinking dirty water, no one thinks that's a good idea. Right. I made seven speeches last week and I was telling a bunch of kids at the last one, I said, look, I probably talk a hundred times a year. No one in 17 years has told me to stop. I mean, I never come off a stage and someone pulls me to the side and says, hey, Scott, hey, Scott, let them die of bad water. Let the women walk. Let them be raped at the water hole or attacked by hyenas or lions

as they're six hours away from their home and their children. No one that gets it wants humans to die of bad water. However, the challenge is, I mean, we're going to round up. 100% of the people I'm talking to have never experienced this issue. You've never had to drink bad water in your entire life because of the privilege you were born into. You could be middle, lower class and never have had to, you could be lower class, you know, regardless of economic status, you know, 99.9% of the people that I talked to have never experienced the problem. Now, if I said, hey, I'm raising money for cancer research, 100% of the people listening have been affected by cancer. Right? We have a friend. We have a family member. We have a loved one, a coworker.

So if you think of so many of these issues that people respond to, you know, it really starts with the education and the awareness. And then, yes, you know, people are all in, at least on the idea of clean water. But, you know, a lot of people are surprised. I had a conversation yesterday. It was just reminded that of all American philanthropy, and this would be true for Europe and many other places overseas as well, 96% of our money stays here. Only 4% of all giving goes over there to help people in need.

of all giving goes over there to help people in need. Only 4% of giving is reaching our arms across an ocean to be a good neighbor for people who are needlessly suffering. That's also a challenge, right? We're kind of fighting for 4% of the pie, and then we're fighting for an issue that no one has ever experienced. So there isn't that empathy. ever experienced. So there isn't that empathy. Exiles in Babylon 2024. That's right, folks, we're doing it again. Our third annual Exiles in Babylon conference will be held on April 18th through the 20th, 2024 here in Boise, Idaho. And this one is going to be an absolute barn burner, as we say here in Idaho. The topics we're going to discuss are deconstruction and the church, and we're going to actually hear from people who have deconstructed and others who maybe should have deconstructed but didn't.

We're also going to discuss women, power, and abuse in the church, which is obviously a huge issue that we absolutely need to discuss. We're going to talk about faith and sexuality, specifically how can churches become places where LGBTQ or same-sex attracted Christians can flourish within a traditional sexual ethic. Lastly, we're going to discuss, I can't believe we're doing this one, we're going to discuss politics. That's right, politics and the church where we're going to have various speakers present. We're going to have a right-leaning Christian, a left-leaning Christian, and a, I don't know, what do you call them? A nonpartisan or Anabaptist-ish Christian share their perspectives.

Share their perspective. And we're going to put them all in conversation with each other. And of course, we're going to have Evan Wickham and Tanika Wyatt leading us in worship throughout the weekend. I really, really, really want to mix it up this year. We're going to hear from leading thinkers in worship throughout the weekend. I really, really, really want to mix it up this year. We're going to hear from leading thinkers in each of these areas. We're going to be having different viewpoints in conversation with each other. It's going to be honest, it's going to be raw, and you're not going to want to miss out. I really think this

one's going to fill up quickly. So if you want to attend in person, Boise, Idaho, April 18th through the 20th, Register very, very soon. Just go to theologyintheraw.com. That's theologyintheraw.com. I really hope to see you there. I'm surprised with such a basic human necessity and how it's led to so many problems, as you explain, even economically. I mean you yeah if you if you if you follow the the the trail of where how dirty water affects an entire society on so many levels how is it why haven't we solved this yet right yeah i mean has there been attempts to just they just haven't been as intentional or or um clear or maybe they're maybe maybe they were one of these corrupt

charities or whatever that went under? Have people not tried to address this problem? I mean, obviously, the answer is yes, but how hasn't it taken off? Yeah, a couple of things. I mean, we've made a lot of progress. So when I started, there were 1.2 billion people without water. Billion? So shocking that is. Yeah. One in six people alive were drinking bad water 17 years ago. So now we're at one in 10. So we've grown global population and we reduced the number by 500 million or so. I will say a large part of that progress was in urban environments. So cities and towns. And now 82% of the people without water on earth live in rural communities.

Okay. So it gets much harder, but we have made a lot of progress. I think sometimes people say, oh, well, we've been dumping all this money into Africa and India and these countries in Southeast Asia. We can show on almost any metric the massive reduction in extreme poverty. So it is working. Now, is it enough? No. It's a fraction of really what's needed to take us all the way there. I mean, so as shocking as 700 million people without water is, I mean, this is twice the population of America. You think of every single America that double it, that's the amount of people globally that are living without their most basic need met. But that's down considerably from almost

double the problem 20 years ago. Is it primarily, you've mentioned Africa, is it primarily Africa or where else in the world is there a huge problem? 35, 40% in Africa, a big problem in India, a big problem in Southeast Asia, 40% in Africa, a big problem in India, a big problem in Southeast Asia, through Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, many of the developing nations over there. Less so now in Central and South America. A lot of progress has been made in the Americas. And you're working in all these countries? We're working in 29 different countries.

Wow. Okay. Can you give us some stats? different countries. Wow. Okay. Can you give us some stats? I mean, on your website, again, everything you... I will second what you said about the branding, the clarity, the education. I mean, this is how just a few weeks ago, my family just got totally hooked on what you're doing. We watched that 20-minute video and it just blew my... I think I watched it twice. I think my wife's watched like nine times or something and anybody she meets she'll be like hey come watch this video you know so she's uh you should hire her she would be a good uh um advocate um so how so since you started you said is it your organization alone or just in general

it's gone from one point in general in general okay yep so in general so you know this would be governments investing in water themselves. You know, that's another question I get a lot. It's like, well, what are the governments doing? Well, they are investing in, in water infrastructure. Yeah. The problem is, you know, many of these countries, the GDP is, is so it's a fraction of what people might expect or a fraction of what's needed to meet the resources. There's one country we work in, you know, millions and millions of people there. Their entire country budget is less than New York City's school district budget in Manhattan. You know, so you've got a country that says, well, we need to take this money and we need to do roads and we need to do

power and we need to do healthcare and we need to do education. I will say I got to take my young kids to Uganda for the first time earlier this year. And we landed in Entebbe and I probably been there 10 times or so in Uganda. But it was really encouraging to see a big banner saying, Ugandan water coverage is now at 67%. Thanks for paying your taxes. To see governments both talk about how far they have to go, because 33% is an enormous amount of people without clean water living in Uganda. But there has been more of a concerted effort to, to use, you know, either international dollars like ours to accelerate work and to allocate more dollars to water. So yeah,

we've helped 17.4 million people. It's about a thousand Madison square gardens full of people, you know, it's, it's certainly, you know, an, an impact to be put that against 700, you know, our, what we've done against the current problem is about 140th, two and a half percent. I will say we're the largest water charity in America by almost 3x. So it's an underfunded sector.

We want everybody to grow. We want more people to raise their hand and say, you know, I'm interested in education. I'm interested in health. I'm interested in health. I'm interested in empowering women and girls. I can do all those things by water. Because water sits underneath so many of the world's problems, so many of the human problems. So I think we want not just Charity Water's community to grow, but really the movement for water to grow. I'll also say, you know, we don't have that billionaire philanthropist. You know, we don't have the Gates. You know, he was an advocate for vaccines, right? And then later sanitation. You know, we don't have the Bloomberg. I mean,

you know, Elon would be great. I mean, he's looking for water 142 million miles away on Mars. You know, it's like, that's cool. I think interplanetary life is cool. But as you look down, what if we gave Earth clean water? Wouldn't that be a nice thing to do? So I think we also are just missing the corporation, the philanthropist that's raising their hand and saying, I'm going to go and get this done. Until that, we've tried to amass millions of people like your wife and the people in her small group to say, everyday people can contribute $40 a month

to a problem like that. Every month, one person gets clean water. I like that better though. I help run a nonprofit helped run a non-profit as well and you know we we we navigate the kind of the the small number of bigger donors and the massive number of smaller donors and everything but that that and both are needed but there's something sweet i think about the massive number right you know both and i'd like to see you know massive capital going to this this problem you know from a from a basos or a Gates or Bloomberg and alongside this army of people, because it actually is going to take both. I'm like you. I get way more excited about an 89-year-old lady that told me she saw the video online and she's giving $10 a month off of her pension. And she knows that every four months, one person is getting clean water because

of her $10 a month giving. That's way more exciting for me as well. Her check that comes in the mail. Or the kid that sends in $8.13 of lemonade money, like actual cash in an envelope to the office. And she's drawn a picture of a well in Africa and says, I want people to stop dying in bad water. I mean, that's the inspires us and and and really keeps us kind of animated yeah you know solving this really big problem i bet the devosses could get excited about this you haven't no devoss money they're they're believers they love this kind of stuff yeah um they've they've contributed over these interesting some of their kids have really gotten involved. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, we find a lot, it's younger generations of people, you know, maybe not the founders of some of the companies, maybe not even their kids. It's like the grandkids, you know, are really excited about global citizenship, about issues like this. How do you deal? First of all, I love, love, love. This is one of my questions and you answered it. How do you avoid the kind of white savior, you know, mentality that, you know, you give the impression that, you know, everybody in Africa

needs somebody in America to give them clean water rather than, hey, the water is in your land. You can do this. So I love that you try, that you seems like you're very comfortable. There's nobody that looks like me working on a water project in Cambodia or Laos or Malawi or Uganda. I love that.

How have you, so people, other missionaries I know that have the same kind of perspective, they said, you know, the challenge is you deal, you do have to, especially in poorer countries, there's a lot of corruption, you know? yet there's a lot of corruption, you know? And so it can be really tricky as you try to empower local leaders, whatever, you know, to make sure you're empowering the right ones. Have you ran into that issue? And how do you deal with that? Like avoiding, you know, working with a corrupt organization

that seems like they're, you know, great at the beginning? Well, we, you know, we now have 17 years of experience. I'll put it that way. And we have a team of people, both internal and external audit functions. And I'll just say there are a lot of best practices that you implement. And we have suspended partners before if receipts for gas and a drilling rig don't add up. So there's, you know, there's such a high level of accountability throughout the process, right? I mean, this is an organization now we've raised over $800 million.

So it's at scale. There's, you know, there's, there's a deep bench of experience, both in finance. I mean, our CFO was at National Geographic for 10 years, then ran the Parks Department. So we've got these really senior leaders who bring a high level of rigor and a high level of expectations when it comes to fiduciary quality and accountability. Can things continue to go wrong? I will say, one of the things that maybe has surprised me the most is as I think about the problems that we've dealt with over the last 17 years, it's not been people, you know, sticking their hand in the cookie jar. It's been well-intentioned work done poorly. Okay. It's like the contractor who builds a house and it sinks into the foundation,

you know, because some of the materials maybe were inferior. You know, it's pipes coming in from the Emirates, let's say, and it's a bad batch of pipes that crack and the wells leak and need to be kind of, you know, rehabilitated. It's naturally occurring iron in the groundwater in parts of Uganda, which would rot out pipes that would need to then be replaced out with, you know, with a different out pipes that would need to then be replaced out with, you know, with the different material that's impervious to that. So, you know, if I think about the biggest challenges that we face, it's around sustainability, it's around sometimes the education, you know, sometimes the software around the hardware, you know, the well cost,

making sure that the water committee is set up and is properly running the water point, is keeping it clean, is collecting enough money to pay for that ongoing maintenance. I mentioned 14 technologies. We just talked about one because people are familiar with drilling wells. A well is like a car. I mean, your car needs maintenance. It needs an oil change. A well is like a car. I mean, your car needs maintenance. It needs an oil change. It's going to need brake pads at some point, you know, maybe the catalytic converter.

And you need to have money for these repairs over time. So a huge amount of time, resources, money goes into the training and equipping, again, of the local leaders. So you're going to see in, let's say, a Malawi water committee, you're going to see four women, four men, a committee of eight. Everybody's agreeing on how much money needs to be collected from the users of that well to go into the bank account to make these repairs that are coming up in six months and in 12 months and in 18 months. The women are always the treasurers, so they're always the ones in charge of the money. months and 18 months. The women are always the treasurers. So they're always the ones in charge of the money. And, you know, that not going, you know, I'll give you an example. The money that is in the water account being used to save the chief's son who's dying of malaria,

you know, would be a bigger challenge than, you know, someone stealing the money. Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense. How much, I'm curious, how much does it cost to put in a well on average? Is it fairly cheap? It's about $10,000 to $12,000. And how much for maintenance? How much would you raise out the door for you to drill? So the maintenance is covered by the communities. Oh, they have to cover the cost of the maintenance.

So they're invested in the... Yes. Now, I will say in many of these countries, we have set up mechanics businesses, maintenance businesses. So we have paid those startup costs. In Ethiopia, for example, we've trained 17 people on 17 motorbikes

that would go out and respond, kind of make service calls. I mean, think of this as like AppleCare for Wells or the Geek Squad. You're really into Apple. I love it. Well, there's a Best Buy reference. Yeah, yeah.

And one of the other things that we've been innovating in is we have sensor technology now. So we have over 10,000 cloud-connected wells. So we are able to monitor the daily flow rates. And a local partner gets notified if the well breaks, if water stops flowing through the sensor and then can dispatch a mechanic out there with the tools. You know, many of these repairs are really simple. I mean, many of these repairs would be, you know, oil change repairs.

You know, you go to a Jiffy Lube and you own $40, for example, which are affordable. That's not breaking the bank. So we have invested in the wraparound maintenance to make sure there is somebody to call. There is someone to respond to the failure. But the actual costs, when it works well, I'll say, are incurred by the community. And can you put, if this might be a dumb question, can you put a well basically anywhere? Or are there certain parts of the country of Africa or wherever that it's like, well, a well is not going to work. We need another method here. Because you talked about other ways of getting clean water. I mean, a couple of things. A well is a great solution when there is

groundwater that is potable water. And, and I think there's, there's sometimes a misconception of, you know, wells drying up. I mean, Africa has five times more groundwater that it needs over the next hundred years. Um, now is it evenly distributed? No. Uh, is it all in the right places? No. So you, you, sometimes the water table is too low to, to drill a well or to drill a well cost effectively. If the well is deeper, let's say than 150 feet, you need a submersible pump that requires energy to get it out. If it's 150 feet, you can pump it out. So, a lot of people are familiar with, you probably see in the video, you know, people pumping a well. So that's 15 stories underground. You know, imagine getting in an elevator, which is a drilling rig and pressing floor negative 15. And that's where your lake is.

And then the standing water table comes up and you're pumping it out, maybe even from, you know, from 50 feet or 60 feet. So there are a lot of factors that go into, or 60 feet. So there are a lot of factors that go into, you know, I'll give you two examples. In Cambodia, we fund the largest biosand filter program in the world. Think of that as like a giant Brita that is filtering an entire family of eights water because there's surface water. There's actually a lot of surface water is just dirty. So that's about the surface water, pouring it through the filter and cleaning it. In Rajasthan, India, we work in the Thar Desert. It's 120 degrees in the height of the dry season. The water table is far too deep to drill effectively. But there, the monsoon rains come and boy, does it rain like crazy for a month.

So what we do there is we rainwater harvesting systems. So underground cisterns that capture that month of rain, filter the water, and then store a year's worth of water. So you're effectively a family there living off of the grid on rainwater harvesting supply. So those are just kind of three very different technologies, all with very different costs. But it all boils down to about $40 per person on average, which is almost unbelievably cheap. Yeah, yeah. When you think of the things that cost us $40 now in our inflationary environment, and then you think of a human gaining access to clean water uh you know we think it's a great value proposition i i've got a really stupid question i almost don't want

to ask it because it's going to spray i could probably no no there's no questions i could probably just google it's a question i've had my whole life and i've never actually tried to google it can we ocean water okay can we not take the salt out of ocean water? I mean, what's the. We can, we can. And it's, it's very, very expensive. Okay. So in these communities, you know, you're talking sometimes a thousand X, the order of magnitude of available cost, right? So, so you're building a capital infrastructure desalinization plant. First, let me just say, this is how a huge part of the world gets their water.

I fly through Dubai all the time on Africa. I think Dubai is 98 or 99% desalinated water. Oh, from the ocean. They're pulling water. That's how they... The ocean. However, a couple of things. One, it requires a huge amount of capital costs to build the treatment facility.

Number two, it requires a huge amount of capital costs to build the treatment facility. Number two, it requires a huge amount of ongoing energy. A lot of energy, right? Not solar energy. We're talking, you know, oil energy. And then number three, there's actually some environmental damage because you have this nasty brine and people either bury the high concentrate of salt or they put it back in the ocean. So you would go and see that that's not a non-controversial issue, dumping high concentrates of salt back into the ocean

after you pulled it out of the water. But it is and the costs are coming down of both building the infrastructure. Again, in a rural setting where communities are making $2 or $3 a day, it's a non-starter. Okay. Could you just boil it? I mean, like you would any other kind of contaminated water or whatever. And obviously, you can't. That's inefficient. But I mean... Absolutely can. And some communities will boil it. That doesn't stop the walk. So that doesn't stop the fact that that water source might be six hours from your house, a round trip, right? Three hours out,

three hours back. It also, people are using cow dung in many of these communities, which burns at a really low temperature. Firewood is really precious. Charcoal is very expensive. You know, there are laws against deforestation in so many of these countries. So the firewood is not as available as you... Well, I mean, think about it. I don't know. If I go to the Publix, that little bundle of wood is like $8.99. It's like seven logs for the backdoor fire pit.

So even just think of how expensive that is. So imagine building that fire at $9 a day to go boil a giant pot of pasta water. It does work if they have the money and if they have the time to invest in that and to buy the charcoal. I was telling you offline, we've got several friends from Central Africa here. my wife showed them the video and everything and um they were like yeah i used literally it was eight years old and i used to walk two hours a day and all of them had they actually had clean water they're going to but it was still you know a good chunk of their day and yeah it's all always the girls um and oftentimes that affects education and everything so so now they're actually giving to Charity Water largely because they're

like, this was my life and I didn't know this could be solved like this. I'm curious. So you meant you're a believer, but your organization is not a Christian organization. Was that a decision or tell us about how you... Because that's a big decision to make early on. I kind of joked that when I started, I didn't know any Christians. That's true. I was in New York City with 10 years of nightclub experience. I mean, I met some Christians on this hospital ship in Africa, but I didn't know any in New York City. So, you know, I joked that I couldn't have even started a Christian organization or a religious organization if I wanted to.

No, it was intentional. You know, I am animated by my personal faith. And I also just realized, you know, a huge, huge part of the world would never do what I do on a Sunday. You know, a huge part of our potential donors who could stand for humans getting clean water would think I'm praying to an imaginary fictitious God. Right. And, you know, why should they have to believe what I believe or, you know, worship the way that I worship to, you know, engage in something that is so universally good? I kind of get to live out my very simple theology every day in that I don't think the God that I believe in wants anyone to drink dirty water. I don't think in heaven any woman is walking seven hours a day to a swamp, risking her life at risk of attack or rape or, you know, or injury. So, you know, it's been so fun to involve all people in that. You know, our biggest donors, you know,

have been atheists and agnostics. Really? Your biggest ones? Our biggest ones. That said, we have, you know, tens of millions of dollars of support coming from church communities, from faith communities in the South. We have synagogues that have been devout supporters of clean water. I was telling you earlier, we had Muslim school kids in the Middle East send in $65,000 during Ramadan that they had collected for clean water. that they had collected for clean water. So that was really always the vision, is to kind of keep promoting the idea of this universal common good, clean water for humans. And maybe it's one of the only things in the world everybody can agree on. I mean, Republicans think this is a good idea,

and Democrats, and Libertarians, and Independentsents and Bitcoiners, like, you know, everybody can say clean water is, is, is needed for humans to flourish, for humans to, to have life, uh, to have a meaningful, healthy, productive life. So we've been able to build, you know, a very big tent of support, um, a really diverse tent of, of support. And I've loved that. Um, and I, you know, I've loved that. And I wouldn't go back and change anything about it. Last, I guess, as we round out the conversation, if people are inspired, I imagine there's a few people out there at least that are inspired. What are your needs? How can people get involved? Obviously, giving money, 100% of their giving goes

to the cause. Are there other kinds of needs? And our finance is always like, if you got a billion dollars tomorrow, would everybody on the planet have clean water? Is it just that simple, a money issue? It is now. And if you'd asked me 10 years ago, it would have been a different answer. But now, with 17 years of experience, we know how to help a lot more people than we're raising the money for. The infrastructure is out there. There's over 2,500 locals, you know, consider them shovel ready, waiting on us to provide

those resources. So, you know, you'd mentioned it earlier. I mean, we have a lot of families start by doing a $10,000 or $12,000 project. They get to see exactly where the money goes. There's an element of choice there of actually choosing a country. Sometimes people will adopt a child from one of these countries and say, you know, I'd love to support in that country, you know, know that, you know, a couple hundred people are getting access to clean water.

You know, we have 131 families that support the overhead. So you never know. There are those sacrificial givers who actually love coming in support of the team, of the staff salaries, of those necessary costs. And then probably the most universal thing is this community called The Spring, where it's just like Netflix or Spotify, except we don't give you any music and we don't give you any movies or TV. We just take 100% of your money every month and we distribute it to people who need clean water. And that is, that has been really one of the most powerful things driving Charity Waters growth. Everyday

people who give 10 or 20 or 40 or a hundred dollars every month, dependably, reliably. And that has, you know, that actually, when we started that program, it helped us triple the size of the organization powered by these small donations, but people, you know started that program, it helped us triple the size of the organization, powered by these small donations. But people who say, I'm not going to just give once. I can do this consistently. So you can go and build these programs and count on this. So that's called The Spring. People can just go to thespring.com.

The video is there. And it takes 20 seconds to join. My friend, Daniel Olson. Do you know Daniel? I forget if you know him personally. I know he knows. He just ran the New York Marathon to raise awareness and money for Charity Water. He was trying to run with, I think, a 40-gallon jug of water on his back, but they wouldn't let him.

It was actually... You bet a lot of people do that. I mean, I'm impressed because it is really heavy. Do people... Last question, do people ever, I would imagine some people like, I want to go, not just invest, but I want to go see, I want to go on the ground and see, is that something that is even helpful or encouraged or is that kind of not, is that getting in the way of what you're doing or? Yeah. So, you know, we don't need anybody drilling wells. So there's nothing to do except learn and to advocate.

And so, so I do take anybody in that kind of group of people paying the overhead. They're able to go, they're able to go with their children. And, and, and that is like one of the few gifts we can kind of give them for their sacrificial giving. But yeah, I mean, there's no, it's not like a habitat for humanity where we need people to actually go out and drill wells. It's really, it's just advocacy when people come you know we we want all that money to go and hire the next local uh to then take that money and you know it really at a fraction of the cost of of us flying somebody over yeah you know yeah can actually deliver that uh in in the

form of support so so the website is charitywater.org. What was the other one? The spring? The spring.com. And that's where people could check out the video that you mentioned as well. And then that helps us as well. If somebody has nothing to give at the moment, you could watch the video and you could send it to some friends and say, have you heard about this issue? Have you heard about this organization? Right. I pay attention to video quality and how, it's an incredible, just the, the, I pay attention to video quality and how people kind of like you with the branding stuff. And I was so,

I'm like, who's this videographer? Who's this director? Cause this is so well done, man. Thank you for what you do, man. This is super inspiring.

And I would highly encourage people to go at least, yeah, go check out if you're not, if you haven't already go check out charity water and watch the video and go from there. So thanks Scott, for being a guest on The Algebra Home. And hey, listen, thank your wife for her support

and her group. That means a lot. It's awesome when we hear of people who have actually experienced this issue. You can tell them they're in the 0.01%. We really, really appreciate that. That's super cool. I'll pass on the word, man.

She'll appreciate it yeah this show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.