Mike Welch is joining with The Thirst Project to build wells. Here is what the organization (which was founded a mere three years ago by college students) has to say about what they are doing and why:

“Water. Water is the problem. Water is the solution. It might not cost as much to build and maintain a freshwater well as you think. The average cost for us to build a freshwater well in most developing nations is just $5,000. That means an entire COMMUNITY of people’s lives can be forever saved with just $5K.

All we have to do is reach the water that already exists in aquifers usually only 100-300 feet underground. One well can provide up to 500 people with clean water for 20 years! One well can save lives.

Once wells are completed, we form a water committee within each community that is educated about the importance of hand-washing and proper sanitization and is responsible for ensuring that the well stays clean and maintained.

When you bring safe water into a community, disease immediately drops by 80%! Child mortality drops by 99% overnight! The solution is too simple and the victory points are too easily attainable for us to continue to ignore the #1 killer of children globally. The solution is water. The solution is us. The solution is YOU.”

Mike is asking people to forgo a trip to a fast food place for just one day and donate $5.00 to this cause. When the funds are raised,he’s actually making the commitment himself to go to Africa and be part of the building crew. There are a lot of celebrities that attach their names to projects, but hats off to Mike for actually taking part in the most hands on way possible.

Edited: We emailed Mike to see if there is a way to make a donation greater than $5.00. As soon as we have Mike’s answer we will let you know.

EDIT 2: Here is Mike’s Answer, “@TwilightLexicon That’s very nice of you. 🙂 Here’s the situation. This campaign is structured like a contest and the “winner” will be coming to Africa with me. {if 5,000 people donate ;)}. Therefore, you can only give 5 dollars, per ONE person. I think this might be a legal issue. However, you are more than welcome to donate additional funds to the organization OUTSIDE of my thing. The need is really great and every dollar helps. Thanks for asking. ”

Edit3: Apparently you can legally do more on that interface. So let’s say you want to donate$15.oo, you would just go through the process 3 times. You can also do what we did which was what we tweeted to Mike: @MichaelWelchAct Ok we did a $5.00 donation on the $5.00 club interface and then we did another one for a different amount on the general donation button at the top of their site. In the comments to the seller we asked them to please credit the amount to your overall goal. We hope you make your goal!