I’m ashamed to tell you, we’ve been feeling a bit smug lately.
Our businesses, and most of your businesses (you tell me), are weathering the economic storm quite well. We are being more prudent, of course, but environmental advantage is proving to be more valuable now than ever. We continue to grow, and we are cautiously optimistic.
In stark relief, the world’s least privileged are struggling as ever and, like salt in the wound, the recession is causing support to dwindle. Let me give you an example.
The Ryan’s Well Foundation is a not-for-profit that we have supported for a number of years. We have watched it grow to help more and more people, all with a single, simple purpose: clean water where people would otherwise have none.
Now, for the first time in its history, Ryan’s Well is facing the prospect of postponing, perhaps even cancelling, important water projects for impoverished communities in Africa. Ironically, funding – just like the communities it would help – is drying up.
At TerraChoice, we’ve committed to try to use the recession as an opportunity for reflection, and to redouble our attention to alleviating poverty.
For us, Ryan’s Well is a compelling choice.
Ryan Hreljac was just six years old when he learned from his Grade One teacher that impoverished people were dying for lack of clean water. For the next four months, young Ryan worked to raise money to solve this problem for a single community. In 1999 Ryan’s first well was commissioned in a Ugandan village.
Today, not only does that first well continue to serve thousands of people, but the Foundation that Ryan and his family since founded has gone on to build more than 450 wells in 16 countries! Young Ryan – now seventeen – and his Foundation have raised millions of dollars and brought clean water and sanitation services to over half a million people.
Ryan, from Kemptville Ontario, is now recognized by UNICEF as a Global Youth Leader. He has received the World of Children Founders’ Award, the Order of Ontario (as the youngest ever recipient), the Ontario Medal for Young Volunteers, the Canadian Meritorious Service Medal, and the Top 20 Under 20 Youth Award. His message has been featured by the Oprah Winfrey Show (twice), CNN’s Heroes, CBC, and hundreds of media outlets.
The mission of the Ryan’s Well Foundation is to BUILD, EDUCATE, and MOTIVATE around one clear message: that every person on the planet deserves clean water, and one voice (the power of one) can make a huge difference.
A powerful and compelling message and yet, in these times, support for charities everywhere is thinning. In the next twelve weeks, Ryan’s Well will be pulling out all the stops to secure $220,000 to keep the water projects on schedule.
If I’m right that we are lucky enough to be weathering the recession better than most - but even if we’re just in the same boat as the rest of the developed, privileged world – we might use the recession differently. This brush with difficult times might remind us just how much more difficult, how much more permanently difficult, some others have it.
We think Ryan’s Well is a great choice and would encourage you to support it, but there are also many other charities that are equally as deserving. (For more information on the Foundation, visit www.ryanswell.ca or contact me directly, perhaps we could do something exciting together.)
You are all great corporate citizens, and I know you don’t need me to remind you of these things, but I try to use this column to share with you what I believe to be important from month-to-month. This is important, now more than ever.
