My moment of change whilst creating hype for clean water

yesterday was my 40th birthday

and i was really excited when i was

first started to speak at tedx

winchester

because that’s where it happened that’s

where i was born

so here i am 40 years later

and the average life in the uk for a

woman is 81 years

so this is it official middle

age but i’m lucky if i was born

somewhere else like the central african

republic

i’d be entering the last quarter of my

life whether my average life expectancy

would be 54 years

so this really is a milestone and it

makes me think

what have i done with my life am i happy

with it

what have i achieved with the relative

privilege of being born in winchester

i’m really lucky to be the managing

director of an organization

called charity water here in the uk and

we’re on a mission

to end the water crisis to bring clean

water to every person

on the planet which is a lot right now

785 million people living without access

to clean water

and that’s about one in ten of us and

i love my job i really love this charity

and not just because of the critical

mission

but because of the way the charity works

it’s an organization which is built on

pretty much

obsessed with values generosity

excellence integrity innovation

100 of every donation made publicly

is sent to countries which score low on

the un’s human development index

a system which uses how long and healthy

lives are the level of education people

receive

and the general standard of living to

give a score and rank how the country is

doing

every single penny is given to local

charity partners in these countries

to bring clean water to people in a

sustainable way

and in a way which best suits their

geography and their needs

and together we prove each one of these

projects with photos

gps coordinates and a map on our website

we also report back to many of our

donors exactly which of these projects

their donations funds

pretty radical transparency i actually

had a very different talk planned

for this event when it was going to

happen in person

in winchester and we’d all have been in

a room

together 2019 was

a good year for me personally my family

was happy

and healthy we’d adopted two cats

charity water had grown over 200 percent

and we’d funded clean water for another

50

000 people and i apologize because

there’s background noise right now

because it’s my son

and because things have changed so my

original talk

my original talk was going to be about

how big change for most of us doesn’t

happen that often

that things accumulate and reiterate and

gradually shift over time

that we only really achieve big change

when we come together

to make big positive things happen

together using our voices and our

actions and our generosity

i see this when a village which has

never had clean water before

gets access thanks to the collective

input

of donors around the world extensive

project management

an amazing local charity partner village

elders

training and the actions of community

members

a drilling team hydrologists it changes

everything which despite all that work

and all those people can feel like

something which happens overnight it

impacts education

gender equity health and for every one

pound invested in clean water

the economic return is between four and

twelve pounds

so that was the talk that change for

most of us

is slow and iterative and doesn’t happen

that much

and that we only make big change happen

when we come together

and i was focused on positive change and

energy

and then things did change for all of us

for me

um covert hit and

things were unexpected and things felt

out of control and it wasn’t something

we felt we’d come together to achieve

it felt like very much like it happened

to me

to us and it’s been lonely

to be confined to our homes to our

communities to our countries

so in a bid to feel less lonely i

thought i’d

change this talk slightly because change

has happened

and i’d share what the experience has

been for me

personally professionally and to make

sure that that 40 years i’ve lived so

far and this my 41st year

feels like i’m achieving something still

the day

about six months ago when i learned that

my children then age three and seven

could no longer go to school or to

nursery or to their child-minder

it was a hard day i broke a bit in the

early evening

i went upstairs to my bed alone

and i cried i cried for a really

long time until then i hadn’t realized

the fragility of the system

which we’d built around our family a

system which meant that my children

could feel

safe and cared for and educated

and even loved while their father

freddie and i

went to work in our family

like in many i know i’m the one who’s

always been responsible for arranging

childcare

and freddie is a doctor for the nhs

so looking after and educating our kids

became my responsibility and it felt

like a time of reckoning

that my children at home with me all day

would realize i’m not really a good

mother

there wasn’t space for strategic

thinking

or creativity freddie’s work is

essential

hard and potentially dangerous

but there are days when i’ve resented

him

until this moment our

careers our lives have always felt very

much in balance

and equal then it changed

he got on his bike every morning

and cycled off to work to do really

important work

while i stayed at home with our children

and my job both of which needed

new and attention in ways i’d never had

to give it before

like many industries charities have been

hit hard by the pandemic

it’s estimated that we’ll lose about

12.4 billion pounds

of revenue this year and bond a network

for

international development organizations

estimates

that about 40 45

of international charities will close

this year

there were campaigns for government

emergency funding

and it came slowly but it was aimed at

charities

doing work for people affected by the

pandemic and by the economic fallout

here

in the uk charity water supports many

local organizations doing this work

in their local communities

internationally since

early on our partners have been training

people on social distancing

awareness of the dangers of the

coronavirus the importance of hand

washing

so we’re not the target for this

government emergency funding

and anyway we’re a charity that is

designed to get people and brands

excited about

generosity and about helping people on

the other side of the world

we’re not set up for institutional

grants

so with some of those brands who usually

give to us generously closed

uh like many organizations we had to

look at ourselves and our work

and how to do it efficiently and we had

to let staff go

in the u.s there are nearly 100

employees and internationally through

our local partners

we employ hundreds more but here in the

uk our london office

the first fundraising office outside new

york

there are just three of us and so i had

to take that team

of three to just me

that was tough i miss my co-workers i

miss my friends

and i feel guilty that i wasn’t able

to save their jobs we wanted to bring

people together in 2020 we were so

excited

we planned to spur generosity to bring

clean water to 70

000 more people who needed it and

now that won’t happen to that size

without three of us here in the uk

our impact will not be so great and so

many people won’t get clean water

and that breaks my heart but i did

promise

to not only share what i’ve found

difficult

and struggled with over the past few

months

but also what i’ve done to try and

refine that purpose

what i’ll do with my 41st year and how i

feel about it

and really i’ve had to focus on

not the size of my impact but to come

back

to my intent before working at charity

water i did a lot of research

into the organization to be sure it was

somewhere i wanted to give

my time and my career and to really

dedicate myself to

it’s known in the charity sector for

being a cool brand for

having this radical transparent 100

model

for using technology and doing really

exciting things

and it’s also known for having a founder

who was once

a nightclub promoter in new york

who gave it all up to volunteer on a

hospital ship in liberia

before founding charity water which is

now amongst the top

250 charities in america

so lots of people know us because of all

that

but that’s not why i wanted to work at

charity water

i wanted to work at charity water after

coming across the story

of a woman called mulitani who lived in

a rural village

in malawi usually when you read stories

of people case studies

from charities you feel sadness

you feel pity you feel concerned

and when i read about mulitani i didn’t

feel any of those things

i really felt inspired i felt like i

wanted to learn from molotani and i

wanted to be

more like molotani when clean water came

to mulitani’s village

she was a similar age to me 42.

unlike me she had six children to take

care of and

for those first 42 years of her life

she had only been able to get water from

a river outside her village

every day she would get up early before

her family to collect water

she’d walk across difficult terrain then

wait her turn with other women to

collect water

dirty water and bring it back to her

family

once home she’d bathe and feed her

children send them off to school

then walk back again to collect more

water

as well as cooking cleaning farming

taking care of animals and all the other

stuff of life

she would make this trip seven times a

day

carrying 20 kilograms of water on every

trip

and knowing that the water she toiled

for could make her family sick

but despite all of this mulitani was

smiling and

genuinely happy the charity water team

spent time getting to know her

and other people in her village they

filmed their whole community

collectively make change happen

every family living in the village

volunteered one person and materials to

build a road across the ravine

a road they needed if a drilling rig was

to draw a borehole

for a well and bring clean water

during this time our team asked molotani

about the joy she literally

radiated how why life was tough

dirty water meant diarrhoea and disease

but mulitani replied that her name in

her language

had a meaning it meant what will you do

with it

so every day she woke up and asked

herself

what will i do with it i’m coming back

to mulitani now

and her story and i’m really trying

to learn from her and to embrace her

approach

to wake up every morning in my 41st year

and to ask myself what will i do with it

at home at work which are now the same

thing

the hardest thing is that so many of us

had all these plans for this year

i plan to bring clean water with my team

to 70 000 people

that won’t happen i may not have that

size of an impact

but the absolute minimum i can do to

make sure i stick to that intent

is to personally join the spring and to

give clean water to one person myself

every single month if i’m doing that i’m

still achieving something

and if i ask family and friends and you

and other people to join me

in doing that then we’re doing even more

and hopefully although it’s in a totally

different way to what i had planned

eventually we will get that clean water

to 70 000 people you may not be

passionate about bringing people clean

water you may be passionate about

something

else but the exciting thing is

that even when we’re at home we have the

ability

to make a difference to be generous to

be kind

to think of other people to give and to

also get angry

so every day i’m waking up

i’m thinking what will i do with it and

as a parent

i’m trying to give that attitude to my

children too

and what i want them to do with it is to

think about other people

to think about how they can work with

other people

and do something for other people

because we all focus on that and we make

that happen

then change will happen

thank you