Generosity.org + Generosity Water: To Give The Gift of Life

Growing up in Southern California, I have always been a “water baby”. When I was younger, I spent my afternoons at swim practice and on the weekends I would compete in swim meets. During the summers, and most of the year when the weather was nice, I spent my days with my family at the beach, building sandcastles, boogie-boarding, body-surfing, or spending hours jumping over the ocean waves and floating in the sea. To this day, the beach is my favorite place to be; it is where I can hear the deepest thoughts of my soul, the longings of my heart. It is where I can rest assured that I will find solace. I have found that I thrive on water -- the image of it, the proximity of it, and the readiness of it. I have not yet experienced a world where the availability of water was not at my fingertips. First thing in the morning, after a workout at the gym, or any time that my body has experienced thirst, I have been able to go into my kitchen and pour myself a glass of water, then walk out of the room and go on with whatever I was doing without skipping a beat. But, 663 million people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water, according to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). For, Generosity.org, a humanitarian organization dedicated to ending the water crisis in Haiti, Uganda, and Ghana, 663 million remains not just a number, but it represents the faces, experiences, and lives of millions of people in the world who lack a basic human necessity.In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, fittingly a time when gratitude and generosity permeate the air, I sat down with Jordan Wagner and Anna Lindtjorn to learn more about the way in which Generosity.org and Generosity Water, the for-profit business, off-branch of Generosity.org, is affecting change, giving life, and restoring dignity to lives around the world. Founding Generosity.org only six years ago, Jordan witnessed how water deeply affects lives and communities while on a trip to East Africa in 2008. During his visit to a community in Uganda, where a month before he arrived there, nearly half the population died from a cholera outbreak, Jordan saw the devastation that the lack of clean water can cause on an entire community. He described this indispensable connection between water and humanity, saying, “water really is the most basic human need, it really is the catalyst for community transformation; you can’t really grow without clean water, and then, at the same time, seeing how clean water was an affordable solution, it was actually solvable.” Upon returning home that November with a passion to contribute to the efforts of others to end this water crisis, Jordan opted out of receiving Christmas gifts and, instead, asked friends and family for donations so he could help this community back in Uganda. The action, then, of raising over $5,000 to build a water project for that community birthed an organization determined to unify people to contribute every one of their talents, passions, and efforts to abolish the global water crisis in our lifetime. Today, Generosity.org has funded over 727 water projects, providing roughly 413,000 people with clean drinking water. On its own part, Generosity Beverages and Generosity Water, a for-profit business selling the highest quality alkaline bottled water with a perfect pH balance of 10.0, has funded three wells since its establishment this past August. But, more than a business that provides the best quality of a product, each product sold enhances the quality of life and sustains the wellbeing of communities around the world. With every purchase of a Generosity Water bottle, two people are provided with clean drinking water for a month. The idea for Generosity Water, then, tethered two actions of generosity, the one that we give to our own selves, and by which we honor the health of our bodies, and the one that we give to others around the world. Appropriately named Generosity.org and Generosity Water, these entities thrive on the belief that it is the generosity of people that transforms communities and impacts the world. This tangible concept of generosity, one that we practice in our daily interactions and dialogues, will remain the driving force that sees this water crisis to its end. Anna elaborated on her take on the concept of generosity, “We truly believe that generosity changes people and … that’s what’s going to change the world … I just think that we’re all created to be generous, we’re not created to live for ourselves; like to fully live, to be fully alive, I think you have to see beyond your own personal needs.” Stepping into the role as Executive Director of Generosity.org, Anna has noticed how the culmination of generous acts provides a transformation unlike any other. In fact, Generosity.org works to ensure that the change that transforms these communities affected by the water crisis, comes from within the communities themselves. The first thing that Generosity.org does in order to enliven the local people to be their own catalysts for transformation is establish a Water User Committee. The first task of the Committee, then, is to set up a bank account with a local bank, a task that has single-handedly sparked the creation of whole banking systems in some regions, like in a region of Uganda. Another way that Generosity.org inspires community empowerment through these water projects is through the collection of fees for using the water projects, a practice that ensures that community members are buying into the maintenance of their own water projects. Every Saturday, then, the elected treasurer of the Committee collects the funds from the water projects and uses those funds for the needs of the community. Some instances have seen those funds used for repairs while other instances have seen those funds attributed to buying books for children so they can attend school. On one of her trips revisiting previously installed water projects, Anna realized the strength of the impact that this in-community buying and that Generosity.org, as a whole, have on the water crisis, not only on a global or quantitative scale, but on an individual and personal scale. In one particular community where a water project was being installed, the president of the Water User Committee went to his local district government and requested that a light post be put in by the water project so that people could get water at night. After working in collaboration with the government to ensure that he could maintain this water project in his community, the government granted his request and brought him a light post. Using the fees collected, the community was able to purchase a lightbulb for the light post, which became the first-ever light post in that community, shedding its literal and figurative light on all its community members. Another example of the tangible change that generosity imparts through the act of giving water is lived through the story of a man named Josue Lajeunesse. On one of his trips to Haiti in 2009, Jordan met Josue who was born and raised in Haiti, but has since moved to the US, where he has been working as a janitor at Princeton University for the past eighteen years. Growing up in a community where mostly everyone has lived below the poverty line, Josue was always inspired, alongside his brother and father, to build a clean water project in their hometown. This lifelong, or nearly forty-year-long, goal of his and his family’s was kindled by the struggle he saw people of his community undertaking just to get water to drink. Because of the environmental, geographic, and socio-economic conditions of this Haitian community, people were either embarking up a treacherous mountain, and endangering their lives, to get water, or they were traveling to a remote river that had contaminated water, and, subsequently, falling ill from it. Upon learning his story, Jordan and the Generosity.org team began to work with him to initiate a solution to build a water project for this community, a solution that would prove to be somewhat of a challenge since it would require $25,000 in order to pipe water down from a nearby mountain. Soon after Generosity.org began working with Josue, a magnitude-7.0 earthquake shook Haiti and brought worldwide attention to these rural communities. However, since Josue was a janitor on a prestigious Ivy League campus in the US, students began to transform this devastating and untimely environmental disaster into an opportunity to make Josue’s lifelong dream come to fruition. After throwing fundraisers, giving up meals, and, ultimately, using of their time and resources in order to pool together their finances, the student body at Princeton University raised over $35,000 in order to help their beloved janitor bring clean water to his hometown. Jordan was, then, involved in producing a documentary called La Source, the name of Josue’s community, which perfectly illustrates the way that Generosity.org pools together people’s talents, strengths, and resources in order to empower people, to transform communities, and to wholly dismantle the global water crisis. Stories such as these perfectly encapsulate the various ways that we can come together as a human race in order to uplift the lives of people around the world by assuring that their lives are not harmed or threatened due to a lack of clean drinking water. With a concentration of their efforts on Haiti, Generosity.org and Generosity Water are transforming communities in a region that has been devastated by a natural disaster that inspired worldwide attention and a region that is continually thwarted by environmental, economic and social obstacles. As a result, only 69% of its population has access to clean drinking water. The proximity of Haiti to the US, coupled with the fact that it is the poorest country in our Western Hemisphere, Generosity.org and Generosity Water are determined to empower other people like Josue to rise above poverty, above circumstance, and above devastation in order to transform their communities and to ensure that their basic human needs are fulfilled. In joining with the efforts of Generosity.org and Generosity Water, you can start by giving a donation, by rallying your friends so that, together, you can fund a well, or by starting an Us For Us campaign. Perhaps, the most worthwhile gift that you can give, is setting the intention of a lifestyle that is built upon and thrives on generosity. The collection of all these generous acts, of these reoriented lifestyles, will create a forcefield against which the most severe disease, famine, or injustice cannot break through. Though the end of the holiday season looms near, the act of giving remains timeless. Your generosity is not confined by the confounds of a calendar season. Instead, your gift, your generosity, imparts an eternal impact, inspires an immeasurable transformation, and supplies incessant hope that, through the bond of humanity, we can surely see this global water crisis come to an end as we empower communities throughout the world. Our action, then, is vital. When the lack of clean drinking water is the current leading cause of death, surpassing AIDS, war, and famine, combined, can we afford to sit idle while the rest of the world demands our attention? When the bond of humanity remains much stronger in aligning our passions, interests, strengths, talents, and dreams than it does in differentiating us, how can we not react to a crisis that is debilitating some of our own? The time is ours, then, to use our capabilities, to light a fire beneath our passions, and to drive our strengths in order to give life to those around the world who share our common humanity. Jordan elaborated on this strength of unity, saying, “for me, it was more about realizing all these different desires and gifts and talents that might be in my heart can be used to actually … make a difference in the world and not just increase the size of my own bank account … [but] use whatever talents that I’ve been given, whatever gifts I have in my life … to make our world better and create a better future for people.” This action sprung forth from generosity, this concern for the wellbeing of people, of strangers, around the world is the fuel that will ignite the fire that will encompass all people of all different backgrounds, strengths, talents, interests, and passions in order to stand against the injustices of the world and to fight to ensure that human rights are awarded to and enjoyed by all people. As we begin to usher in a new year of life, a fresh start, let us begin and continue curating a lifestyle of generosity. Let us give the gift of water that gives the gift of life throughout the world, and let us work fervently until all people can bask in the goodness of life and all it has to offer.