RAW donated a total sum of $54,896.00 to Wine to Water for hurricane relief! Wine To Water will use the money to provide clean drinking water to people impacted, because the first thing people need in disaster relief is clean water. This was all possible because of you, our faithful fans and followers! Without you, none of what we do would be possible. We all did this together and we are proud to be part of such a RAWesome family.
“All men are created equal.”
That simple strong statement is universal and what guides us at RAW. For, if all men are indeed created equal then all human life is equal. If people are dying of starvation and thirst 10,000 miles away or 1 mile away their needs are equal and we must help them. You’ll see that although we do some local projects the majority of our work has been in faraway places that have the greatest need. We run the foundation using what Josh calls Entrepreneurial Philanthropy. In short, we save and improve the most number of lives possible with the resources we have. It doesn’t matter where the people are, all that matters is where we can have the greatest impact.
Who We Are
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What We Do
How We Do It
Can You Help?
Some of our greatest accomplishments;
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- Supplied over 283,520 meals to malnourished Children
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- Dug many deep bore water wells in Ethiopia where the locals were dying from draught
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- Created and funded a key water filtration project to fight against “typhoid beach” in the Congo
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- Refurbished and Repaired 13 defunct water wells in Uganda as part of the RAW LUCKY 13 water well project
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- Furnished hundreds of Sawyer Filters for emergency water after Super Typhoon Haiyan
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- Sponsor an orphanage in Bali Indonesia (and community outreach programs)
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- Created and funded several CONNECT AFRICA permaculture design courses that taught over 50 community leaders how to capture water from the rainy season and harvest crops all year long (this is already working to eliminate starvation in their communities)
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- Sponsor and establish Sustainable Living Groups (SLGs, formerly known as Self Help Groups or SHGs) which directly build successful communities in the poorest of areas in Africa and eradicate usury.
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- Repaired and refurbished 20 defunct water wells in the Shashemane region of Ethiopia, which is considered Rastafarian Zion
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- Developed, created and installed a large-scale water well and distribution system to service Mother Teresa’s main hospital in Addis Ababa (more on this below)
- Developed, created and installed an intricate water filtration project for Mother Teresa’s second hospital in Afar (this project we were able to accomplish in a record 5 months because the Sisters pleaded with us that they had no water and the locals were perishing every day of thirst)
- Executed a deal to help buy/protect 3000 acres of the Sumatra Rainforest with Rainforest Trust and their anonymous donor. This will help save the Sumatran Tiger, Orangutans, Elephants and more
Some of the success stories
It’s important to us that you know we are a self-funded foundation. That means we take no donations. We use our own funds from money we make in our normal course of business to fund our humanitarian projects. If you’re supporting our brand you already have helped!! Any donations we ask you to give directly to our ground partners Wine To Water or Water Is Life International.
There isn’t enough room on this page to tell you all the wonderful projects we have been involved in and we rarely update this site. Our time is better spent doing what we love which is saving and greatly improving lives.
How many lives have we saved?
That’s a great question and one we love answering. We have saved or greatly improved over 10,000 lives so far. That’s a substantial number and one that we are very proud of. Whenever someone tries to judge us, we look them squarely in the face and remind them of our accomplishments. The thing is, while 10,000 seems like a huge number it’s only a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed. We save these people because we love them. All people are created equal and they are us.
Let our accomplishments be an inspiration to you. The world needs you to be a massive success so that you can stand up and join us in the fight for what’s right.
Our proudest accomplishments are what we did for Mother Teresa’s hospitals in Ethiopia. In 2015 we redid her well at the main hospital in the capital and in 2016 we built a solar and wind powered water treatment plant at her second hospital in Afar.
Mother Theresa’s Ministries of Charity is a “hospital of last resort” that houses around 1000 people (850 at the main hospital and 150 at Afar) who are suffering at the greatest level imaginable. We knew that getting them clean water was extremely important. When I first saw the well, it was not in good condition at all. A nun explained that they use it whenever the city water goes out (which happens monthly) and they have to pail-fetch the water because the pump’s been broken for so long she doesn’t ever remember it working! As I walked away thinking of how to fix the well, I saw kids playing around a big red water truck on blocks. The ministry used the truck to supply water to outside communities in desperate need during droughts but the truck was in disrepair. So RAW pledged both redo the well and redo the truck – period. This turned into our biggest project up to that point. First we repaired the well but learned that the water itself was contaminated – it was only surface water full of runoff and human waste from the surrounding city. Next we dug a new very deep 150 meter well to access fresh clean water. Because it’s so deep we had to install electric pumps. The electricity is sporadic so we created a system of pumping the water into a 7 day elevated storage tanks with many simple nuances to keep things running smooth and sustainable. It’s cost us over $75,000 USD for this project and is worth every penny. This project alone has saved and will save many thousands of lives.
In April 2016 we met with Head Sister Marela in Ethiopia. She praised us for the main well and pleaded for help with a terrible water problem at their Afar hospital and center. In Afar they have a compound that houses 150 patients and also services many of the poor, destitute and disabled from the region. They also operate a free kindergarten school for 60 students. They only had access to unsanitary water that was not fit for human consumption (there was once a purification system but it had been irreparably broken for over a year). Their patients and the local people were dying of thirst. We stepped up and did a rush emergency project with our ground partner Water Is Life.
The solution was to construct a small treatment plant that consisted of a 20” tall building with water cooling towers on the roof and inside. There is a combination of solar and wind turbine power to power a reverse osmosis (RO) system to remove 98% of the salts from the water. The system had to include cooling tanks because the groundwater coming from the well is too hot for the RO system. After two days of cooling the water is sent to the treatment system which includes a prefiltration unit, reverse osmosis membranes and UV light to complete the treatment and sanitation process for storage in tanks and final distribution.
Before we installed this plant the sisters had almost no drinkable water. They were constantly hand-boiling water to trap the steam just to have enough water to survive. Now there is 3x more water than their current needs and we have committed to inspecting and maintaining the system for years to come. The cost of this project to date was $67,000 USD
