Meet Ryan Hreljac, the child who quenched the thirst of half a million Africans.
His name is Ryan, he was born in Canada in May of 1991. When he was only 7 years old, he heard his school teacher talking about how children lived in Africa.
He was deeply moved to realize that some of these African kids even die of thirst, while all he had to do was to turn the water tap at home.
Ryan asked the teacher how much it would cost to bring water to Africa, and the teacher remembered that there was an organization called “watercan”, which could make wells for around 70 dollars.
When Ryan got home, he went straight to his mother Susan and told her he needed $ 70 dollars to buy a well for African children. Her mother said he should earn the money with his own effort, and gave him different tasks with which Ryan earned a few dollars a week.
Finally he collected the $ 70 dollars and went to the “Watercan” association. Where they told him that the real cost of drilling a well was $ 2,000 dollars. Susan made it clear that she could not give him all that money, but Ryan did not give up and promised that he would come up with the 2,000 dollars.
He went on to perform tasks in the neighborhood and accumulating money, which inspired his brothers, neighbors and friends, who set out to help collect the necessary funds. And in January 1999 a well was drilled in a village in northern Uganda.
When the well was ready, Ryan’s school started, to have communication with the African school that was next to the well. And that’s how Ryan met Akana: a young man who struggled hard to go to school every day. Ryan was captivated by the idea of going to Africa, and he asked his parents to pay for his plane ticket so he could travel to meet Akana. In 2000, he arrived in the town, and was greeted by hundreds of people who formed a corridor and shouted his name.
– They know my name? – Ryan surprised told the guide.
– Everyone who lives 100 kilometers around knows your name. The guide answered.
Today, Ryan, who is almost 27 years old, has his own foundation and has taken more than 400 wells to Africa. The foundation is also responsible for providing education and teaching the natives to take care of wells and water.
Ryan Hreljac (born May 31, 1991) is a Canadian activist, who established the Ryan’s Well Foundation to bring water to people in developing countries. By 2015, there were 900 water and sanitation projects benefiting 824,038 people. The 1,000th well was dug in the fall of 2015 in northern Uganda. The foundation has brought clean water to more than 892,725 people in 16 African countries.
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