Thirst by Scott Harrison

Thirst by Scott Harrison was from the founder of charity: water and the book jacket notes that the nonprofit over the past eleven years has funded some 28,000 water projects via contributions from over a million donors.

The book notes how when Harrison four years-old, his mother was exposed to carbon monoxide poisoning from their house, impacting greatly her immune system for decades to follow. It was fascinating reading on how debilitating her illness was, how easily it would get triggered, and the lengths people would have to go to in order to spend time with her as she had to be kept away from toxins. Also compelling was reading on the effort Harrison's father put in to try to help his wife improve.

Harrison details how he in his early 20's worked as a New York City nightclub promoter, living a fairly wild lifestyle, and then reached a point of reconnecting with the religious faith his parents tried to instill in him and wanting to start anew. He landed a year-long volunteer gig as a photographer with Mercy Ships, an organization that that worked in Africa providing free health care, particularly in the area of dental work and surgeries on the eyes or to repair facial abnormalities like clefts or disfiguring palates. During Harrison's time there, he was exposed to the problem that is a lack to clean water, with people he met educating him about how many of the problems faced by people in Africa can be traced back to this shortage. After his time on the Mercy Ships boat ended, he returned to New York and starting hosting fundraisers for the organization and then started a new charity focused on clean water.

The portion of the book about charity: water covers things like the three pillars of the group... the 100% donation model, with organizational overhead paid by a fairly small group of donors known as The Well so that every dollar from other charitable contributions goes directly to water projects, how donations made are tied to specific projects and people told what they're giving to, and that the branding around donations is designed to inspire people rather than try to make them feel guilty. Also detailed is the story of Rachel Beckwith, someone who for her ninth birthday asked her friends to donate to clean water rather than getting her presents and shortly after died in a car accident. Her pastor in Seattle asked Harrison to reopen her giving campaign, with it first getting donations through the church congregation, and then complete strangers as the story went national, leading to the campaign raising in Rachel's name over $1.2M from some 31,000 donations.

It's a good and inspiring book and noted at the end, along with information about The Spring, charity: water's monthly giving program, is mention of using the code 'together' from the website to learn more.

Great pieces on water and resource utilization

There's been a few few different pieces (and one video) I've seen recently that struck me as fascinating on the subject of water as a resource.

From a recent issue of Businessweek was "Israel's Water Ninja" by Amanda Little on the Israeli Integrated Water Network Management startup TaKaDu. It's a remarkably interesting look at water efficiency and identifying leakage on a widespread utility scale where the losses prevented can be enormous.

Related to water usage required was a piece from the Jan issue of Outside Magazine with "The Top-Secret Food That Will Change the Way You Eat" by Rowan Jacobsen. Written about the company Beyond Meat and its forthcoming Beast Burger, it's a well written and important look at the idea of getting away from eating beef, among other reasons for the huge amounts of water needed to generate a pound for eating.

For the Dec/Jan issue of Fast Company was "We're Running Out of Water" by Jon Gertner, an interesting piece that notes how water systems, and the concept of desalination from saltwater to drinking water, can have fairly entrenched markets, effectively limiting the amount of innovation and people looking to enter the field.

The last thing to note here on the subject of water isn't actually a written piece, but rather a video on the Google Ventures website with Kevin Rose interviewing Scott Harrison of the highly regarded Charity: Water. Just a fascinating guy doing important work.