WiB Friends: Stephen Elder

One of the questions we get asked most often is this: "I agree with your model that is committed to empowering local people in South Sudan, but I still want to be involved with your project. How can I help?"

Our typical answer is, "Great! How do you want to get involved?" We're not being flighty or dodging the question, we really want to know. Just like we're committed to empowering local people in South Sudan to bring the gift of clean water to themselves, we're equally enthusiastic about empowering our supporters to use their unique gifts/abilities/connections to support WiB the best way they can. Saying "here, fill out this form and show up at this time to do something you may or may not be qualified/excited to do" just isn't our style.

With that, I'd love to introduce y'all to our friend Stephen Elder. Today is his 31st birthday, and marks an end to his campaign of awareness and fundraising for WiB. For the past 31 days, he has run for 3.75 miles (the average distance girls in South Sudan travel daily for clean water) carrying a 5 gallon jerry can full of water. He's taken vine videos and Instagrams, tweeted and blogged and encouraged his friends and family to donate to clean water.

It's a simple vision: I'm going to run for miles with 50+ pounds of water for 31 days, so that 100s of girls never have to do it again.

And it worked. So far, he's raised over $4,000. That's enough to drill a clean water well in South Sudan. That's enough for hundreds, maybe thousands of girls to never have to run for 3.5-4 miles with 50 pounds of water again.

What can you do? How can you help?

Let us know what you're doing!