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Lessons - How One Man's Mission Transformed Global Water Access | Scott Harrison - charity: water Founder · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, discover how a journey from addictive pursuits to humanitarian service
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  can spark profound transformation. Learn why leaving self-serving habits behind
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  paves the way for true purpose and impact, and understand how leveraging storytelling and
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  personal skills can mobilize global change.
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  So, I've heard you speak about how you were always trying things that would be considered
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  addictive. So, like drugs, alcohol, gambling, women, you would always, like you try these things
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  for a period of time, but then you'd get bored and you'd shut off and you'd go on to the next
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  thing, and it was always about seeking purpose. And I'm curious how, after seeking purpose in all
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  these, you know, traditional vices, how none of it paid off, and none of it really gave you what
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  you needed, what prompted you to do that 180, where you realized, okay, outside, if somebody's
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  from the outside looking in life looks great, life looks like I'm fun, I'm kingshit, I have a
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  hot girl, I mean, I have influence, whatever, but what was that point that you realized that all
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  these vices that you were trying to find purpose and were not really doing it? Yeah, well, in many
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  ways it was a spiritual awakening, so I hit that kind of moment in South America where I just remember,
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  it was almost like the game of musical chairs, and for the first time, the music stopped and I had
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  nowhere to sit down. It was a jarring existential moment where I think if I put it in a sentence,
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  I realized there will never be enough. Someone will always have more, and I was actually surrounded
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  with people who had more, who had planes, who had, you know, yachts, and they seemed unhappy too.
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  So this endless pursuit of more would never bring the happiness. And so what is the opposite of
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  that? You know, the self-serving. So I look to God, and I remember reading the Bible again, and
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  you know, rediscovering that faith as a 28-year-old without it being shoved down my throat, without
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  being told what I must believe. I remember just thinking like, well, Jesus is kind of badass. He's
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  not religious. In fact, he was raging against so much of the religious establishment of the day.
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  And, you know, he was really all about service, you know, pouring your life out for others,
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  so that others can flourish, so that others can benefit. I remember coming across this book in
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  this verse in the book of James, where it said, you know, if you care about true religion,
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  true religion is this. Look after what does in orphans, and just keep yourself from being
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  polluted. I'm like, I'm frigging over too. I mean, I have done nothing to look after anyone in the
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  widow and orphan category, and not only am I polluted, I actually pollute others for a living.
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  And the more people I pollute in my clubs, the more money I make. So it was a lot of these things
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  happening, you know, kind of reaching the end of rope, reeling this would, realizing this would
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  not make me happy, kind of coming back to this lost faith and spirituality and morality.
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  And then just needing an idea, which was actually, you know, went back to this concept of the
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  tithe. When my parents were growing up, they would always give 10% of whatever they made to the
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  church. And I was like, well, what if I tithe time? I just blew 10 years. What if I gave one of
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  the 10 years in service and just saw where that would take me? And, you know, interestingly,
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  it was almost impossible to volunteer. And so I remember applying to the first 10 humanitarian
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  organizations from the Red Cross to World Vision to save the children and, you know, nobody wanted
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  a nightclub promoter. These are serious doctors without borders. It turns out once doctors to
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  join their mission, you know, not club rats. So it became incredibly frustrating because I now
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  had the desire to try something different to serve and nobody would take me. And then I was very
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  fortunate that, you know, I call it the 11 organization, you know, wrote me back and said, hey,
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  if you're willing to pay us $500 a month, and if you're willing to go live in the poorest country
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  in the world, you can join our mission. And I just remember thinking, I mean, that is really the
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  opposite of my life, you know, going from clubs in crystal champagne to a post war country in
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  West Africa and actually having to pay money to be of service. What was the organization? And,
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  and is that how like outside of all the ones you apply to, is that how they operate? They actually
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  get you to pay. They do. They do. They do. Exactly. Exactly. It's a brilliant model. They're called
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  mercy ships. They sell a, well, now a couple of hospital ships up and down the coast of Africa.
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  Very simple ideas. Let's recruit the best doctors and surgeons from around the world. Let's
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  invite them, you know, on effectively a cruise liner that had been converted into state of the
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  art floating hospital. And then let's sail up and down the coast of Africa, pull into port and
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  offer free life changing surgeries to people who can never afford them and who don't even have
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  the medical facilities in their country. So what I joined as was the volunteer photo journalist
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  for this was going to say, what, what, what was that? What's the most for motor going to do on these
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  boats? And it's kind of funny because I was not technically a photo journalist, but I was a pretty
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  good writer and I was a pretty good photographer. So I put up a blog with some of the stuff I'd written
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  and I put up some of my hobby photographs, you know, in fashion and, you know, beautiful buildings
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  in Prague and Paris. And, and I don't even think I realized it at the time, but I was in so many
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  ways uniquely qualified for this job because I brought with me a guest list of 15,000 people
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  who I had emails of because I got them drunk over the last 10 years. So here I land as kind of
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  the storyteller through pictures and and words in West Africa for this medical ship. And I get to work
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  you know, bombarding the 15,000 people that a few weeks earlier I had been inviting to come get drunk
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  and I start sharing photos of cleft lip surgeries and cleft palettes and tumors being removed
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  and cataracts being removed and people getting their sight for the first time. And I was so in awe
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  of the work of these compassionate doctors who like me had flown into West Africa to pay,
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  which which all that money, like you said, helped the organization run. And I'm just
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  blitzing my list and, you know, of course there were some unsubscribes at first to help people
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  didn't sign up for, you know, facial tumors in Africa being removed. But after that first wave,
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  the list actually began to grow as people would forward these stories to their friends and then
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  they began to send money. And I started to realize maybe the same skills that I had developed,
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  you know, filling up 40 different nightclubs over 10 years, you know, throwing the party.
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  These skills could be used in a compassionate, redemptive way to actually save people's lives.
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  And I wound up raising a lot of money for mercy ships that first year, raising a lot of awareness.
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  And then when that year ended, I just didn't know what was next. So I just went back to Liberia
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  for a second year. And that is really when I discovered why so many people were sick. And just to
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  give you an example, you know, our third day on this mission, I remember waking up in five in the
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  morning, putting them in hospital scrubs and jumping in this convoy of land robbers with doctors
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  and surgeons and nurses. And I had two Nikon D1X cameras around my neck. And I learned that we're
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  going to the patient screening. And this is where we receive all of the people who have heard
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  about the coming of our doctors. And it's kind of like a cattle call. It's like a big casting.
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  It's an audition for surgery. And I knew we had 1500 available surgery slots to fill. We could
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  hit out 1500 surgery cards. And I remember just thinking, you know, is it possible that there's
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  1500 people who need facial surgery or cleft lips or eye surgery? And it turns out the government
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  had given us the soccer stadium, the football stadium in the center of the city to triage these
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  patients. And as we approached the stadium, I'll never forget, there were more than 5,000 people
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  standing in the parking lot waiting for our doctors to arrive, open the doors and begin screening.
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  And that hit me really hard, you know, realizing, oh my gosh, we're going to send 3,500 sick
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  people home. 3,500 people with deformities because we just don't have enough doctors. We don't
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  have enough time here in this country. And, you know, it was a really, really hard thing. I learned
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  later that many of these people had walked for more than a month. Some of them had come from
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  neighboring countries with their children walking for a month just in the hope of getting their
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  child to see a surgeon. And we didn't have enough of them. So the first year was a lot of both
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  sadness around the people we couldn't help, but then also learning the skill of focusing on
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  the hope and focusing on the people who we could help and telling their stories. And hoping that
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  by telling their stories, more people would want to contribute, more people would want to send
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  money for surgeries. We could expand the capacity of the work and hopefully one day reach all 5,000
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  people. The second year was going into the villages and seeing how people were living in one of the
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  poorest countries in the world. And I learned something very, very simple. Half of the people were
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  drinking dirty water. Half of the people in the country were drinking from open swamps and ponds
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  and muddy rivers. And I learned that half of the disease in the country, according to the World
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  Health Organization, was waterborne. And in the second year, you know, so now I'm 29 years old,
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  I'm back in Liberia. I just kind of feel like I have found the thing that I want to work on.
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  You know, why not jump to the root cause of so much of this sickness? And for me, that was dirty water.
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  But I finished that tour and I came back to New York City at 30 years old, completely broke,
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  found myself actually $30,000 in debt because my club partner had not dissolved the business. Like
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  he said, he was going to do no already paid taxes. So I had a big tax bill. But I knew exactly what I
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  wanted to achieve in life. And that would be to try to bring clean water to every human being
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  on planet earth before I died. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable,
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  don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive
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  deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See
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  you in the next one.