Dear Friends,

Two years ago this month I turned 40. I remember Trang asking how I would like to spend my birthday and responding to her that I did not need anything special. This year will be different.

I am reaching out to enlist the 100 people who have made the most positive impact on my life (past and present) to help me raise $2,000 to bring clean water to a forgotten people in a forgotten country.

Got 5 minutes and 28 seconds? You can learn more about the Bayaka people here http://www.charitywater.org/september/. But my request for your help runs deeper than these people on this birthday.

As some of you know, Scott Harrison (the founder of Charity:Water who started the campaign) and I connected by pure chance in a restaurant in Soho, NY on a crisp fall day in 2006.

Scott, a former NYC fashion photographer, had just returned from spending a year on a Surgery Ship in Africa. He was working the restaurant armed only with a slide show on his Mac and a personal story that would change my life forever.

Scott inspired me and Alex Hofmann to start Changents, a powerful place on the Internet that engages audiences in the unfolding stories of Change Agents who are taking on the world's most urgent issues.

With a mission to connect people who are changing the world with those who help them, today I am incredibly proud that the risk we took is helping hundreds of Change Agents working across 30 countries including artists and adventurers, entrepreneurs and inventors, musicians and first responders, athletes and activists.

Every morning I am inspired to be working with the most extraordinary people on the planet. Individuals who are...

+ designing street packs for people living a homeless condition in the most dangerous urban centers in the United States;

+ trekking deep into remote regions of Kenya to help farmers save their communities from unsustainable farming practices;

+ pioneering parties with a purpose in Los Angeles to raise money to drill water wells in Uganda;

+ swimming down the Atlantic seaboard from New England to DC to take toxicity measurements and help students understand what it means to protect our oceans.

+ Setting up Lacrosse teams in Nicaraguan garbage dump communities to provide children a sense of purpose and community in unspeakably harsh conditions.

+ and countless other missions that are led by courageous individuals - my peers - many in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.

We have worked with companies who understand that social purpose is a business strategy, helping them find ways to connect with consumers who expect businesses to play a central role in solving social and environmental problems.

And we have had cool, totally unexpected opportunities such as the partnership with Sony Music (Kevin Kerslake) to feature Change Agents from our community in the Daughtry MTV music video What About Now?

I am excited to invite you -- my "Top 100" -- to celebrate my birthday this year by giving $20 to Charity:Water.

I will leave you with this. Two weeks ago I met a woman who was kicked out of her upper/middle class home when she got pregnant at 18. She struggled for 10 years in ways that I simply could not relate to, but has broken through and is a radiant success story. To what does she attribute her success? A relationship with God.

I asked her the question that I seem to be asking myself more and more. Can I do good in the world even if I do not have a relationship God? I feel like I have something special... an unconditional compassion for people who did not get the lucky break that I did. Is that enough?

She said that indeed I would NOT need a relationship with God to give back, but that I would probably have to work twice as hard at it! That's cool. I will work twice is hard if that is what it takes.

Thanks for taking this step to give water in one far-flung place at this moment. Your $20 to me means more than the finite objectives of this campaign.

You've been a big part of my life and I need your help to do my small part for people like Scott Harrison and the thousands of others that Changents will serve in the coming years.

Yours truly,

Deron