Scott Harrison
Benefitting It Takes A Village
From the outside looking in, he was living the dream. Private jets, exclusive parties, money, models and celebrities. But on the inside, Scott Harrison was rotting away. After a decade of heavy drugs, booze and blackouts he came to a realization: his life was morally and spiritually bankrupt. Hungry for drastic change, he packed up and shipped out to volunteer aboard a military hospital vessel off the coast of Liberia in West Africa. For the first time, Scott witnessed devastating poverty and widespread illness, children drinking dirty, diseased water. And he had an epiphany. If he could just figure out how to get clean water to the masses, he could be a doctor to millions. In 2006, Scott went back to New York where he created the model for what would become a revolutionary non-profit endeavor, Charity: Water, which to date has raised $500 million and helped over 12 million people.
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Wise Words
“I was brought up in the church playing piano every Sunday in Sunday school and I was the good kid who didn't smoke, I didn't drink, I didn't cuss, I didn't sleep around. I took care of my mom, but that was childhood.”
“...our lives looked really glamorous on the outside...but I was just rotting inside, sinking, deeper and darker into despair, really into a soul sucking hedonistic, sycophantic existence.”
“So, there was something about the health issues and there was this clarifying moment that said, oh my gosh, what if I did die in the next few weeks? What would my life mean? My tombstone might actually read: Here lies a man who got a million people wasted.”
“I had this cathartic realization that I'd hit bottom. It was like the game of musical chairs and for the first time the music stopped and I found I had nowhere to sit.”
“I remember this one woman named Marguerite, she was in her twenties and she had cataracts and these cataracts were so big you could see them. They were like white saucers in both eyes and she had no access to a cataract surgery. So, she was completely blind and I remember meeting her and documenting her for the medical library pre-op and then I remember scrubbing up for her surgery and thinking the surgery took like 25 minutes to remove the cataracts.”
“...I just remember, I can't believe a woman is blind for lack of something so simple. And the next day I was there, I made sure I was there for the moment when they took off the patches to see if the surgery was successful...I remember when the nurse takes the patch off, she starts screaming and dancing and crying with joy, and she tackles the nurse and bowls her over.”
“...Then she tackles me as I'm taking pictures. Then she hugs her sister. Watching someone gain sight...it was just extraordinary.”
“I'd go to these villages and I would see human beings drinking water from swamps, brown, green viscous, bug filled diseased water and there was something about that that was in such comparison to my context of water because I used to sell Voss water in nightclubs for $10 a bottle, and people wouldn't even open the water and they would just order 10 bottles, let a hundred dollars of water sit on the table as they drank champagne and vodka instead.”
“I remember him saying you could be a doctor to millions and millions of people if you just got them the most basic need for health, if you were able to help them get access to clean water.”
“There was something so simple about that. At the end of the second year, I came back and said, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to work on water. I'm going to work with a very clear mission, as long as I can to make sure every single person alive on the planet has clean water to drink.”
“...How can I be of service? How can I help? How can I use my privilege or my position or the money that I'm able to make to be of service to others.”
“I was hoping to say to people that it's never too late to change. I mean, all this stuff sounds so cliche, but maybe I said it an edgier way. Like if a degenerate, drug addicted, nightclub promoter chasing girls and the party around the world can see the error of my ways or my lifestyle, and want more and change and build an organization that's helped 12 million people across 29 countries...unless you've killed someone, you weren't as bad as me. I mean, I was as bad and as degenerate and as hedonistic, there was no hope for me, you could have said. If you met me at three in the morning at that after hours club or five in the morning of that after hours club...so it's never too late to change and I think that story maybe gives people hope, or maybe thinking a little differently about service or purpose.”
Links
Charity: It Takes A Village
Facebook: @scottharrisoncw @charitywater
Instagram: @scottharrison @charitywater
Website: charitywater.org