Giving Back — May 26, 2016

Colorado, Bear Hugs, and 2.5 Million Gallons of Clean Water

by James Stork

1040.com and Healing Waters staff meet in Golden, CO

Celebrating 1040.com's contribution to Healing Waters International in Golden, CO: D'Anne Maddox (1040.com), Kayla Fruchtman (HWI), Rob Anthony (HWI), James Stork (1040.com), and Libbie Olsen (HWI)

By choosing to e-file your taxes with 1040.com this tax season, you helped us raise $172,836 to support Healing Waters International (HWI) and its goal of ending the global water crisis. That translates to an incredible 2,592,540 gallons of clean water – that’s a year’s supply for 14,205 people!

But we didn’t just want to mail Healing Waters a check and our best wishes.

This past week, 1040.com boarded a flight bound for Golden, Colorado, home of HWI. To our surprise, Alex, HWI’s Dominican Republic Operations Manager, who we met on our site visit this past December, greeted us with bear hugs upon arrival, excitedly telling us this was his first time in the United States. It was great to visit with him again – Alex has a gift for storytelling.

We were all there for the same reason: to reunite with the people who had a huge impact on our lives these past six months.

Not even the Colorado fog could cool our warm welcome, and we were soon taken on a tour of the HWI headquarters. The walls were decorated with wooden boards, each painted with a unique quote supporting HWI’s mission and purpose. One in particular stood out from the rest:

“Healing Waters prefers to serve 1,000 people for ten years versus 10,000 people for one year and then fail.”

Healing Waters is driven by its devotion to people. They believe that dedicated aid for these communities means more than dropping off a water purification system. HWI is not only committed to establishing clean water sites, but also to health and hygiene education, work productivity, empowerment, and hope.
That’s a true investment.

The passion of the HWI team was tangible, especially in the engineering facility. We were fascinated by the innovation behind the water purification systems and the engineers’ tireless efforts toward efficiency and sustainability.

HWI's engineering facility

Kayla Fruchtman explains the water purification process

After the tour, we all sat down to discuss Healing Waters’ vision for the future. They are currently helping local communities in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, Guatemala and several African countries, and hope to extend their reach to even more areas over time.

unfiltered and filter waterNow, because you furthered our Clean Water Initiative by filing your taxes with 1040.com, Healing Waters International has an even greater ability to transform its vision into reality.

Thank you for joining us in this incredible journey with Healing Waters International. Because of you, 14,205 people will not have to worry about using a polluted water supply for an entire year. Instead, they will be learning economics, the science behind purification, and how to build a sustainable future.

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