Review of Charity: Water / Published in The Courier

Pure in motives and excellent at proving it are two points worth highlighting in an age where trust amongst charities is hard to earn. “Charity: Water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of public donations directly fund water projects,” (“charitywater.org”).

Charity: Water demonstrates excellence by their method of proving what they do. Once you have donated towards a specific project and it is underway, you can locate and see it through Google gps maps.

Photographs dominate the Charity: Water website and provide those who donate more than a “word” that it got there. The photographs are not sad and full of despair, rather show those being helped as strong hopeful individuals. Many of the photos show that they are not hurting those they are trying to help by enabling them, but teaching the native people, to build their own wells and educating them along the way to make it sustainable.

Not only do they raise money to build the wells, they provide in-depth information on why they prioritize water over other needs and then giving information about the world water crisis. The way they use diagrams and reformed prose allows for the common man to understand the crisis and the cause.

Their pure motives are demonstrated through photos on their web page but also the daily tweets of photos, and the fact that 100% of their donations are going directly to water projects.

From reading books such as “When Helping Hurts”by Brian Fikkert and “The End of Poverty” by Jeffery Sachs, I have learned that working towards to root cause of problems, rather than just the symptoms, is key in providing lifelong sustainability and actually curing the problem. Charity: Water works at a main root cause of poverty in third world countries, lack of water. More organizations need to exist like this.

There needs to be people who will tend to the needs of the symptoms of poverty, but if an even larger group is not working preventatively than what good is it if we never cure the problem.

Charity: Water is an organization that provides people with an opportunity to give money without a doubt in mind of how it is being used. The people the wells and education are benefitting are actually being given a chance at rehabilitating their communities. Their creativity in branding and building a trust amongst donors, young and old, is worth highlighting. For more information on how you can donate or become educated on the world water crisis visit www.charitywater.org.