On my 19th birthday I hopped on a plane bound for Cotonou, Benin, a city I couldn’t even pronounce much less locate on a map. I was committed to at least six months of volunteer work in some of the poorest, most war torn areas of Africa. Sounds like an adventure right?

That flight was the first step towards me realizing what a charmed life I have lived, taking things like clean, safe drinking water for granted. I worked among the poor and needy along the West coast of Africa and got to experience firsthand how heavy water can really be. These people face a much harder daily routine than I'll ever have to deal with. It changed the direction of my life forever. To this day a little calculator in my head looks at merchandise in stores and equates bags of rice or how many people could get clean water for the price of that item.

So no birthday presents for me this year. My tiny NYC apartment certainly doesn’t need more stuff. For the big two-five all I want is to give 25 people clean water. Can you help me? You might spend $25 if we went for cocktails and you bought me a birthday drink. Instead, please help me help those who have never experienced clean water with a gift of my age ($25) or whatever you can spare. My goal is to raise $500 by March 31st (when new projects start kicking into gear) and I’ve made the first donation to kick things off!

This is your chance to part of the solution. Watch this video to the right and see what your money can do! Together we'll get the almost billion people without water (that's one in eight of us) wells and water projects that really change lives.

Thanks and love!
Meg (1/12/1986)