I have never been a big fan of my birthday; to me, it is just another day of the year. Yet it's hard to have a birthday and not reflect over my life and how fortunate I have been. Tons of people will never have the opportunities I had.

But it's those forgotten "tons of people" that really need the opportunities the most. Everybody thinks about the impoverished, but nobody really, actually, thinks about them. That's what bugged me the most: that everybody knows that there are people who need help but only a small handful of us actually do what we know is right.

This year I hope to become one of those people. It's for that reason that I would like to use this campaign on mycharitywater.org to take my first step towards consciously helping others who don't have what I have grown up taking for granted.

This year I hope to give somebody the opportunity to have a birthday. Hopefully through these donations somebody else will be able to have what they might not have seen otherwise.

So if any of you are hoping to do something for me in honor of my 20th birthday, please keep your presents and your birthday wishes and instead put something forward for this cause, that's the best gift I could ask for.