Starfish & Pistol

The ongoing contributions of many friends and colleagues are making a huge difference in many lands, including: Haiti, Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda, India, Indonesia, Sumatra, Chile.

Here’s a painting at an Argentine UN Military base in Haiti.

Here’s a well known fable  – a story I use to describe our work:

‘It’s extreme low tide and tens of thousands of starfish are stranded on the beach. An eight year old girl is picking them up one at a time and tossing them back into the ocean. A jogger has stopped far down the beach and is carefully observing all this. Eventually he walks up to the girl and says with authority, “This is a noble effort little girl, but (pointing up and down the beach to thousands of dying starfish) it isn’t going to make a difference”. In silence the girl bends down, picks up a starfish, and throws it into the water, then replies, “It made a difference to that one”.

Here’s another way I describe our work: In the remote regions of the world where we bring our clean-water systems, the practice of fetching drinking water from traditional  sources is akin to playing Russian Roulette (A bullet is placed in one of six chambers –  the pistol is pointed at your own head – you pull the trigger and hope it isn’t your turn to die). When we go into an area and distribute simple bucket filters we are effectively removing that bullet from the gun. It makes sense that kids around the world shouldn’t have to play Russian Roulette every time they take a drink of water.

It costs $50 to bring clean drinking water to 100 people, anywhere in the world. jack@water4everyone.org

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