Charity: water is an organization started by a guy named Scott Harrison. I don’t know the first thing about Scott, other than what I read in his bio, but that guy has worked magic. His site looks great, his videos are compelling and he Twittered the hell out of his recent Ethiopia trip. He also makes great use of tools like Google Earth, shoots a lot of his own material, and just makes you feel good about stopping by to check out their operation.
As far as I can tell Charity: water is a powerful fund raising charity that works through implementing partners in the field. You can see the partner logos at the bottom of the project pages. They have mastered just about every form of social media out there and, if I am not mistaken, their Twestival (Twitter+festival) made $250,000 in one day.
Detractors will blather on about funding, overhead, biases, silver spoon, impact, etc. but from what I can tell the guy raised a bunch of money and then went out and dug a well. You’ve gotta love what this guy has achieved. Hell, I’d give him some money just so I could keep watching the production value in his videos. At the end of the day Scott Harrison has charisma, charm and a vision which are all qualities that are sorely lacking in most aid agencies these days. Most importantly he has put a face on an organization and humanized it’s activities.
I have no idea about their financials, effectiveness, skeletons in the closet, etc but I am sure you guys will let me know. Go ahead folks, lay it on me.
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