In 2008, charity: water founder and CEO Scott Harrison bet that he could raise 10x as much money as 7-year-old Max, who had given up his birthday for one of our first September campaigns. Scott promised to give a public concession speech if he lost.
Max won, and Scott conceded. Two years later, Max’s parents took him to Ethiopia to see the wells he had funded by giving up his birthday. “It was the defining moment of my life,” 19-year-old Max shared recently. “It completely altered my perspective and the way I’ve appreciated things throughout my entire childhood and into early adulthood.”
My pitch as a 7 year old was essentially, ‘This isn’t fair.’ Here I am, a 7-year-old child, and there are seven-year-old children in a different country dying because they do not have access to a basic human right. It felt like, ‘I have clean water. They should have clean water, too.’
Sometimes things are more straightforward than they really appear. If there is someone who has less than you, and you have more, and you can afford to give a little bit to the person who has less, then give to the person who has less. Adults can learn from kids by thinking about the world a little more simply.
