BadGalsRadio – Roots, Riddim and Truth since 99'

I’m turning 34 on Monday. On the same day, charity: water will turn three.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the psychology of enormous problems. About how people will always rush to save one child but disconnect when faced with helping thousands of children. “One death is a tragedy, a million – a statistic,” we’re told.

Non-profits like ours that are addressing enormous problems (a billion people without clean water) are told to make sure we don’t scare people off by communicating how big the whole problem is.

Author Seth Godin recently wrote that the problem with enormity in marketing is that it doesn’t work. He said “Enormity should pull at our heartstrings, but it usually shuts us down. Show us too many sick kids, unfair imprisonments or burned bodies, and you won’t get a bigger donation, you’ll just get averted eyes.”

While all this may be true, it just seems rather boring. Visionless. I believe people want to sign up for something bigger than just one. I did.

There’s a proverb in the Bible that says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” People are certainly dying all around us, but could that be because we’re terrified to tackle the enormous? Because we don’t have the faith to see the entire problem solved?

I can’t quite see to a billion people yet, but I’m getting closer. Your generosity has helped us do that. In only three years, 60,000 people around the world have donated $11 million. That means 750,000 lives will change. 750,000 people will get clean water to drink.

So in the spirit of solving enormous problems, we want to step it up this September, and serve our first million people. Then keep going until every single person on the planet has clean and safe drinking water.

We shot a video that explains how we want to do that through the 2009 September campaign. Please watch it, share it and act.

We’ve also built a new website that allows everyone to use birthdays, anniversaries, weddings… to run marathons, swim and dance – you can do just about anything to help. Every dollar given is tracked to the project it funded, and GPS coordinates and photos are posted on Google Earth. Like always, 100% goes directly to the field.

In the 9 days since the September campaign launched, individuals have already raised $87,000 towards our ambitious goal.

Live from Haiti.

To continue our tradition of spending each anniversary in the field, I’m flying to Haiti where I’ll also celebrate my birthday on Monday by opening a new water project with our local partner. And in advance, I’ll do my part again by asking you and others to take 3 minutes out of your day to donate $34 for my birthday.

We’ll shoot, edit and broadcast the celebration on Monday night via satellite so you can see the progress being made.

Stick with us. Here’s how you can continue to make an enormous difference.

1. Donate $34 for my birthday.
2. Start a fundraising campaign and get your friends involved in the fight for clean water.
3. Share the September Campaign video with others.

borninseptember.org