Mommy & Daddy helped pull his thoughts together. But for the most part, these are indeed Shyam's sentiments:

On March 20th, I'm turning 6.

I've learned that this is a pretty lucky and amazing thing and I hope you will join me in doing something that I care about.

The earthquake in Haiti and all of the pictures in the newspapers of soldiers made me really think about how different some peoples lives are around the world.

Did you know millions of people don't live to see their 5th birthday because they can't get to clean, safe water?
Did you know more people die because they can't get clean water than the number of people who die from war?

It is hard for me to believe.Water and milk are my most favorite drinks! I can't imagine a life without either.

Imagine having to walk from our houses to Tod's Point (our local beach, for those of you not from here!) to get water from the puddles before school. GROSS! I've seen tadpoles, worms and all kinds of cool, but not fun to eat things in there! This is exactly the kind of thing that so many kids and moms do. And it's all about luck. We were lucky to be born here. They weren't. It's not fair.

But I think we can help. For my birthday this year, I'd like to help some of those people get what we have - clean water and a very good chance of celebrating plenty of birthdays to come.

For every $20 we raise, one person can get clean water for 20 years!

This is because Charity Water helps them to build wells which means that they don't do all that walking and get to the clean water way down under the ground.

All the money raised goes directly to doing just that (my mommy told me that she checked into Charity Water, and they have some nice people that pay their wages and make sure the costs of making all this happen - aka, admin costs! - are covered, so all of our donations really do go to help people directly). And when the well is complete, we will get to see the photos and GPS coordinates of that well.

It's not easy for me to give up toys from my friends, but the truth is that we have more than enough.

And don't worry I'm pretty lucky. I get to do this AND my family is getting me a few great presents for my birthday!

Thanks so much! Shyam

PS
My goal is to raise $500, not the $1000 it says on top there. But $1000 would be great!!