You’re awesome.  No, seriously.  You joined HandsIn because you care enough about yourself, each other, and the planet to take action.  You’ve shown that caring is the seed of change and that taking action is what brings that seed to life.

For the past month, HandsIn has been working to plant a wide variety of seeds, giving you ideas about how you can better your world each and every day by making small, realistic changes.  And now we’re ready to come together to do even more.  This month’s theme is teamwork, and in that spirit we’re taking our first collective action to show that 20 somethings can create real change.

We’ve teamed up with 20 Something Bloggers to raise $5,000 for charity: water- the cost of building a clean water well in a developing country.  Did you know that 1.1 billion people on the planet don’t have access to safe, clean drinking water?  That’s one in six of us. One in six!

Can you even imagine what your life would be like without clean water?  Water is such an integral part of our lifestyle, from showering to laundry, washing dishes to brewing coffee, brushing our teeth to just having a glass of water when we’re thirsty- and there are 1.1 billion people in the world who can’t do those things.

This is where charity: water comes in.  A 501(c)3 organization with private funding, they use 100% of donated money for water projects around the world.  And they’ve harnessed the power of the internet to show donors exactly what their money is creating.  12-18 months after we’ve reached our goal, we’ll receive GPS coordinates and photographs of the completed water project we funded.  And donating is just a click away!

While we’re raising money and awareness about the need for universal access to clean water, it’s also important to be conscious of how we use water here at home.  With this in mind, the fantastic people at Brita (responsible for the FilterForGood campaign, a joint effort with Nalgene to reduce bottled water consumption) are sponsoring a prize giveaway for donors!  So get wet with us by donating whatever you can ($5, $10, every dollar counts!) to our charity: water fundraiser, and then come back here, brag that you’ve donated, and you’ll be entered to win a Brita pitcher and 2 reusable water bottles!

Let’s do this!  Let’s build a world-changing 20-something well and bring clean, safe water to an entire town in need!