Hey, thank you for visiting Casey and Sophie's fundraising page 😊This year, instead of receiving birthday gifts we are asking for money to go directly into funding clean water projects in developing countries -- the same amount of dollars as our birthdays, but you can give as little as a few dollars, it still goes a long way!

To provide some background on why we picked this charity to donate to and why we wanted to 'pledge our birthdays' in the first place... (explained by Sophie)

Just a quick note: 100% of the money will be used to build clean water projects, and when they’re complete, charity: water will send us photos and GPS coordinates so we can see the exact community we helped.

I learnt about this charity when I was listening to the Rich Roll podcast while painting for my HSC major work. The episode was called "Scott Harrison on Why Clean Water Changes Everything", in which the founder of charity: water went into detail about his life and how certain events led to the initiation of the organisation. Many tears were shed between me and Casey as we listened and we knew we wanted to be part of these water projects across the world.

Reasons why charity: water stands out from other charities and is worth giving to:
- 52% of all diseases in the developing world are water-borne
- 1 in 10 people do not have access to clean water
- Every day, 1400 children die from diseases caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation
- Women and young girls often have to walk for 8 hours to bring water to their homes
- 50% of schools in the world do not have clean water or access to toilets
- Charity: water has raised a quarter of a billion dollars to date, funding 23 000 water projects and providing water to 7 million people
- Provides drilled wells, spring protections and BioSand filters to communities around the world
- A new model for charities where 100% of public donations go directly into funding water projects (costs of running the charity is covered by private donors)
- Hyper-transparency - all water projects public on Google Maps/Google Earth
- Finds local partners in developing countries to promote sustainable community development
- Installed remote sensors across all water projects to ensure water sources are still working, training mechanics to repair them

Scott Harrison spent a decade of his life in a self-serving state of mind as a successful nightclub promoter, immersed in a world of money, celebrities, drugs and alcohol, and finally had this “crisis of conscience” when he realised no one around him (as well as himself) was happy. He then completely turned his life around and volunteered as a photojournalist for Mercy Ships, encountering the most extreme poverty in Liberia – all of which he had to document. Thousands waited for the arrival of the doctors on this ship who had given up their time at their own expense to help people – people with tumours, leprosy, burns to the point they were unrecognisable, blindness. In his travels he found that half of diseases were water-borne, and he saw people drinking from swamps infested with bugs and dangerous pathogens, children under five dying from diarrhoea and hence dehydration by drinking from the same dirty water sources. After the foundation of charity: water, he was visiting one of the water projects and a hotel owner told him of this 13-year-old girl who wanted to be a doctor, and one day at the end of her 8-hour walk to bring water to her family she slips, breaks her clay pot and ended up hanging herself out of shame. Harrison was not sure if the owner was merely trying to make him feel good about himself and so he travelled to this remote village and found the story was true, and that there was an abundance of heartbreaking stories like this.

A 9-year-old girl named Rachel from Seattle pledged her birthday. She raised $220, which was short of her $300 goal and felt as though she had let people down. Shortly afterwards she passed away in a car crash as the only fatality in a 20-car pileup. She ended up raising 1.3 million dollars with her campaign because 40 000 people all over the world were moved by her wanting to give more birthdays to others instead of receiving things a 9-year-old girl usually asks for. She indirectly raised another 2 million dollars by people being inspired to donate their birthdays, overall transforming the lives of 100 000 individuals.

“I think there’s a real freedom that comes with service, but so many people are enslaved in the service of themselves.” - Scott Harrison