This article was published on November 12, 2012

With “100 wells for the holiday”, Charity: Water seeks to build clean water wells in Ethiopia


With “100 wells for the holiday”, Charity: Water seeks to build clean water wells in Ethiopia

Charity: Water, a popular non-profit organization, today unveiled its 2012 holiday campaign. Called “100 wells for the holiday“, the goal is to build 100 clean water drinking wells in Ethiopia. This global campaign kicks off with the release of a YouTube video encouraging people to do whatever they feel comfortable doing to help raise funds — doesn’t matter if you’re quirky, young, sporty or whatever.

Over the past five years, Charity: Water has taken off and helped fund 6,185 water projects in 19 developing countries. More than 2.5 million people have benefitted from these projects and now have access to clean drinking water. The organization says that 100% of all public donations will go directly towards the project cost.

If this non-profit organization sounds familiar to you, don’t be surprised. Chances are that you’ve had at least one friend or colleague tell you that they don’t want anything for their birthday except for your donation to help build a well in an impoverished country. It was also the spotlight charity at the first-ever Twestival in 2009 that had over 200 cities worldwide participating and has raised over $250,000.

Charity: Water is also a favorite cause for many of the tech industry’s well-known founders and investors, including Napster’s Sean Parker, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, Foursquare’s Dennis Crowley, Bebo’s Michael Birch, and investor Chris Sacca.

This campaign leverages YouTube’s “Campaign” feature to help it accomplish its secondary goal of getting 100,000 views on its video.

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The organization says that it has 364 campaigns already running in support of this effort and raised over $78,000. Each well costs $10,000 to build in Ethiopia and it’s hoping that people can donate $20 to this cause.

Photo credit: Chris Sacca/Flickr

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