Causes

How nonprofit CEO Scott Harrison went from playboy to patron

After a decade spent as a hotshot nightclub promoter, then-28-year-old Scott Harrison, left behind a life of alcohol, drugs, women and late-night partying to found charity: water, a nonprofit bringing safe drinking water to people in need across the world.

By Lauren Harris, Parade

But his path wasn’t easy, and now he’s sharing the vulnerable truth behind how he hit rock bottom and turned his life around for the better – and how you can too! – in his new book Thirst: A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World.

One fateful night a heated nightclub dispute and death threat left Harrison running for the hills – literally. He packed up and went for a drive up the New England coast in search of new – more impactful – meaning for his life. He decided then to dedicate the next year to serving others in foreign countries – and the rest is history.

Harrison founded charity: water about two years after splitting ways from his old late-night party, binge-drinking lifestyle. Since its founding in 2006, the nonprofit has raised more than $300 million to fund nearly 30,000 water projects across 26 countries, bringing the basic necessity of clean water to 8.5 million people. When Harrison started on this journey in 2006, nearly 1.1 billion people were living without clean water. Now, that number is 663 million.

Staying true to his “actions, not words” mantra that has empowered him to make a life-changing difference for people in places like Haiti, Uganda, Ethiopia, Pakistan and India, all net proceeds from his book will directly fund water projects in rural communities. Take a look at this map of all the organization’s completed water projects.

Read on for a peek into the gut-wrenching moment on a trip to Liberia that solidified Harrison’s new venture to bring clean, safe water to people in need, which he shares in his book, Thirst, out October 2.

Read the full story at Parade.

Up Next

3 promising new technologies could help send stormwater to taps in thirsty cities

Read Now
Editor's note: Stories appearing on NCF's website from third-party contributors are intended for informational purposes only, and we do not endorse or approve the content, services, products, or theological teachings they contain. Any questions or concerns may be directed to the original publisher of such third-party content.

Sign up for our
Saturday 7 email digest

Join close to 50,000 subscribers who receive our email digest of
the week's top stories from ncfgiving.com. We call it Saturday 7.

Read our privacy policy

×