Water for People

One of the things about my job that I am most grateful for is my introduction to the non-profit organization, Water for People.

I talk a little bit about the organization at the end of this post. There is a lot of wonderful things I can write about Water for People, but for your sake and mine I'll keep it short.

My top 3 favorite things about Water for People:

1) They have found that the best way to help a village is to empower the people to take care of themselves.

2) 82 to 85% of all funds go directly to the projects. That is an amazingly HUGE percentage. Some non-profits lose 80% in administration and have only 15 to 20% left for the projects.

3) They don't have a cookie-cutter solution. They go to the town, find out what they need, find out what they want, find out what they have, and then create a solution that will fit best. If the town just needs a bucket, then they give the people a bucket and help them plan financially for the next time they need a bucket. brilliant.

Carollo Engineers (the company I work for) supports Water for People by fundraising during the month of May. Carollo has several offices throughout the country that participate in this fundraiser. Because God knew I would love it, I somehow became the point fundraiser person for in the Pasadena office. Let me tell you, I had NO CLUE how much I love fundraising. We've made t-shirts, sold cookies, given presentations... and it has been a blast. We're even raising money! :)

And now to the point of this post.

We are having a Happy Hour in Pasadena to support Water for People. Spread the word.

The purpose of the happy hour is to raise awareness and to raise more funds. The party will be at Bar Celona, who has offered to donate 15% of the revenue from the happy hour to Water for People. There will be a raffle, where all gifts have been donated and all the money raised will go to Water for People. There will also be a mix of people, from college, engineering companies, the Pasadena Fire Department, random people I have met while fundraising, hopefully complete strangers that I didn't even invite...

So if you are in the area, or if you know someone in the area, or if you can get to the area, please join us at the happy hour! The more the marrier!

Here are the details:

Who? Carollo Engineers, Water for People, Bar Celona and you :)
What? Happy Hour!
Where? Bar Celona: 46 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena CA 91105.
When? Wednesday, May 23rd, 5 - 7 pm
Why? To help Water for People get water to the people.
How? 15% of your purchases at Bar Celona will go to Water for People.

Please let me know if you can go, and please invite your friends! My hope for this event is that people will become more aware of the water crisis around the world and of the ways that Water for People is working to counter the problems, that we will raise money for the organization, and that we can meet other people in the area that are supporting the cause.

If you have any questions, please post them and I'll see what I can do to answer them.

I'm feeling reflective, so its time for a story

There once was a little girl who had no clue what her future would hold.

She wanted to grow up and be the next Amy Grant. (Now give her a break, she was just a little girl.) Deciding that show-biz wasn't the life for her, she knew she had to choose something else. She liked the ocean, so she thought that maybe she would be a marine biologist. She liked school, so maybe she would be a teacher.

In the third grade she got glasses. (Yes, she was young for glasses, but oh well. Not everyone has perfect vision.) Every time she went to the eye doctor, she wanted to know why. "Why is he making me watch the tip of that pen? Why is he writing something down? Why does changing the lenses and saying 'one, or two? two or three? two or four?' help him know what perscription I need?" So she decided to become an optometrist. She told her optometrist the news, and he said there was no money in it. He told her "you should become an eye surgeon, they make more money." After considering his advice for a while, she decided to become a laser-eye surgeon. And when it came time to apply to colleges, she applied for all the pre-med programs in the state. She got into almost all of them.

She picked her college and her major, but she was nervous. "Am I doing this because I want to, or because I decided in sixth grade that I would?" Early spring semester of her senior year of highschool, her grandpa wound up in the hospital with heart problems. While sitting in the ICU with him, she kept staring at the medical machines. That night she realized she didn't want to be a doctor. She didn't want to do laser-eye surgery because of the eyes, but because of the lasers. She liked the machinery. She needed to be an engineer.

So at the last minute she chose a different school and a different major. She began her engineering experience having no clue what she would do with it. Maybe she would do bio-medical engineering. Maybe she would work with planes. Maybe she would become an astronaut. After struggling through 2 years of general courses and lower level engineering classes, she doubted her choice. Engineering was hard and it wasn't personal. She didn't like doing math all the time and testing this and analyzing that. The summer after her sophomore year, however, she came across the idea of civil engineering and transportation. She had been living in a city where they had actually made one-way roads in order to keep the traffic away from the low-class, run-down areas. That bothered her and she wanted to change it, so she decided to become a transportation engineer.

Two years later she graduated from college. She went to a far-away country for a month, where her world was turned around and flipped upside down. She fell in love with it. She fell in love with the people, the place, the weather, the culture, and the life. And they didn't have running water. That was stupid. It was raining every other day and they had pipes, but they didn't have running water. She decided that she could fix that problem, that she could figure out how to get the water to the people. And once again she changed her mind: she would do water engineering.

So fourteen years and 11 careers later, this girl went from wanting to be the next Amy Grant, to wanting to work with water.

The next battle was finding a job. In her four years of college, she had taken only one water course, which unfortunately had nothing to do with the water engineering she was interested in. She went from one civil consulting company to the next, not finding a place that fit her desires or a place that fit their needs. She again began to doubt, but this time she started to doubt all of her choices. Did she pick the wrong college? Did she pick the wrong major? Should she have just decided to be a missionary? She could have just moved to that country that she loved and stayed there forever.

And then she found it. She found the job that she never could have dreamed of. She does master planning in infrastructure. She looks at a city, looks at where the people are and how much water they need, and then looks at how much water there is and where it is stored, and figures out the best way to get the water to the people.

And here's the best part:

The country she fell in love with is in Africa. The company she works with helps support a non-profit agency called Water for People, which does work in Africa. They help people build and maintain water systems. They help people get water. To top it all off, a woman in her office is on the board for Water for People and is working with them in India this month. She is taking extended time off from the company to work with Water for People, and the company had no qualms about her leaving for so long. Her job is waiting for her when she comes back.

So the story ends with this:

There is a slightly older girl who still has no clue what her future holds, but she is extremely excited to find out.

to be continued...