Your thoughts on 40 Days...

Since 40 Days of Water started we've been hearing some truly great stories from people participating. We have been and will continue to share them along the way on our Twitter and Facebook pages. However, we want to share a couple of the reflections you may have missed. Send us links to yours as well and we may post it.


One participant, Robert shared this reflection on starting his 40 Days:

"Ultimately though, even though it feels like a sacrifice, giving up water for 40 Days isn't that big of a deal personally.  I still have a nice apartment, plenty of food, and water.  When I want water - anytime I want water - I go to the sink and turn it on.  I have cold, fresh, clean water (I have a water filter I can use as well).  I can fill up my Nalgene and carry it wherever I go.  Today I easily drank close to 100 oz. of clean water - I never worried about where my next sip of water was going to come from or if it would make me sick.  That's why I'm doing 40 Days of Water.  Not drinking coffee, milk, juice, or wine only makes me think about missing those things.  Replacing it with water I can have whenever I want reminds me that there are many people who can't.  And by me making a simple sacrifice for a short period of time I can take a small step to change that for a few people.  For every $1.oo I save one person in Uganda can have water for a year.  One person can have life."

You can read more of Robert's thoughts on his blog.

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A group of students organizing a 40 Days of Water campaign at Virginia Tech shared their thoughts in their college paper:

 "We give all these statistics but it's still not really personal to our lives," said Sam Choi, a junior accounting major at Virginia Tech. "Participating in the campaign will hopefully show students what people in these communities have to live with every single day. They can't choose, and we can, so hopefully the campaign will encourage students to choose to help those less fortunate than they are."

Justin Gross, a graduate student in accounting, wanted to emphasize the simplicity of helping to change the lives of these people.

"We don't realize how simple it would be to help these people," Gross said. "The reality is that $1 would provide a person in Africa with clean water for an entire year. Forty days of only drinking water won't just solve everything," Gross continued. "It's simply allowing us to step out of our reality into theirs for a change and realize that it is up to us to continue to help the communities in Africa and change their lives for the better."

Read more on these students' effort HERE