Hi everyone, my birthday is coming up soon and I actually do have something to ask for. Something really, really important. I'd like you to help donate to my birthday campaign for chairty:water.

This summer, I worked at Oxy researching global water issues to create stories for our new digital media wall. Global water issues. The global water crisis. Lack of clean water. Poor sanitation. Women and children walking for hours. Vulnerable children dying from curable diseases.

Sure, I'd hear these problems thrown around all the time, but I felt I never understood the issue.

I spent my summer pouring over images to try and best convey these issues, and found myself drawn to the uniquely profound impact water has on life, individuals and communities as a whole.

I found myself drawn to Helen Apio, a powerful and beautiful woman in Uganda who used to walk for hours to fill her jerry-can of clean water. She now serves as the Water Committee Leader in her local community. And Jean Bosco, a young man in Rwanda who felt for many years that unsafe drinking water would simply be his daily reality. And Ramya, an adorable 5 year old girl who now has proper sanitation facilities after a new toilet recently installed in her village in Tamil Nadu.

Working with their images every day made their lives more of a reality to me. Water became so much more than "water". Water is dignity, sanitation, income, a stepping stone for women's empowerment, change agents in entire communities, the difference between health and disease, really, really, the difference between life and death.

I could tell you statistics and list the number of people who have unnecessarily died for causes that we can help, but the reality is that numbers usually go past all our heads and this campaign is about how a small effort can change one person's life, and maybe an entire community too. Ramya. Jean. Helen. Lima. I somehow feel like I do really know these individuals, and I'm inspired by how water has helped them transform their lives.

After this summer I've been moved and inspired to act, especially by the work of charity:water. 100% of your donation will directly go to a water project, and this month the projects are in India, which is especially dear to me. I hope you can help me make my small effort a reality. It would be an amazing gift. Thank you so much!