Watering Haiti- the goal of the summer
As many of you know, Haiti has been completely devastated by the overwhelming outcome of the tragic earthquake earlier this year. We have been raising money for the last 4 months or so and it’s been a quiet start so far. Primarily because I’ve been looking for a worthy cause to send what money we raise to a charity that will benefit the country of Haiti the most. First I thought, “what do i want to achieve?” Build a house? Clean up a village? Where is the money most needed right now for the people of Haiti? I read articles about sanitation and living situations of some of these people and how many are living in their own sewage without clean water of their own to drink. On my way to this telethon the driver of our car service had said he recently had gone home to Haiti to check on his loved ones and they were in dire need of help.
“What’s the main problem that your loved ones are facing?” I asked.
He only replied “Clean WATER.”
This was odd to me, i mean, I’ve always had clean water a twist of a faucet away from me, and here was a man with an entire family that had to carry their water some many hours every day just to facilitate their family’s need for bare-necessities. THE bare-necessity, WATER. After looking on the internet and a welcomed tip from an associate, i found Charity: Water. This is a 100% non-profit charity that is truly making an impact on this world. They’ve impacted over 16 countries and given over a million people clean water. I, like many of us, have tried many charities in the search for a good home for the monies we generate for Haiti. I found them all to have boards of trustees or some loopholes with bullshit red tape, yadda yadda, but Charity:Water is different. It was started by this guy named Scott Harrison. when he was 28, he decided that life was about more then just cheap thrills and living for your own success. He jumped in a volunteer program called Mercy Ships and went to third world countries to document treatment of patients on his ship. This is where he realized that many of the people he was encountering were all victims because they had no clean water to consume. This is when he decided to come back to the U.S with a mission: Work towards quenching the thirst of one BILLION people. I went and saw his key-note speech about the mission of Charity:Water and his presentation blew me away. I knew then and there that this is where we can send our money for Haiti. So, what is OUR GOAL? I want to try and build 3 wells for Haiti by generating $15,000 from the sales of the Don’t Hate On Haiti shirt. I want everyone who helped to be able to see exactly where the wells were built and what people were benefiting directly from OUR donation. And with Charity:Water, we can!!! Every well or water project they build has a GPS location, pictures, and testimonials from the people who have benefited from donations!!!
Now, im working on getting a T-shirt sponsor to cover the cost for the shirt, and I am personally paying the printing costs for the shirt, so after covering the shirt costs, ALL of the proceeds of this will go towards making our goal. I’m so excited to get this going!!!! We start the big push for this at Warped Tour next week, so start sending me pics of you guys in the shirt, I’ll be at our merch booth every day to help spread the good word!!!!
Your friend,
Tyson Ritter
The All-American Rejects
