HEALTH: Weight Loss For Water

I was introduced to charity: water by a friend of mine, Erica Mayer. Erica is a self described “Preditor” (producer/writer/shoot/director/editor) for the WCCO-TV Creative Team. She is also a hobby photographer, co-founder of Java Meetup Minneapolis and generally an all around great person. This spring she did an online campaign to raise money for the organization for her birthday. The idea being that people give contributions to charity: water instead of buy her gifts. Erica raised $11,111 during the three month campaign.

This summer deciding that she needed to get in shape, and being mildly obsessed with this organization, Erica decided to take her weight loss public and start another campaign for charity: water. Originally she was going to do to the campaign privately and solicit donations from close friends and family. Her friend Cindy Elizabeth decided to join her in losing “weight for water” and had the idea that other people might want to join in too. With that simple suggestion Erica decided to take the idea public and the Weight Loss For Water campaign was born.

I have decided to join Erica in her campaign and lose weight for water. Why am I doing this? First of all I believe in chairty: water as an organization and support their mission of bringing safe drinking water to people in developing nations. From the charity: water website -

‘Most of us have never really been thirsty. We’ve never had to leave our houses and walk 5 miles to fetch water. We simply turn on the tap, and water comes out. Clean. Yet there are a billion people on the planet who don’t have clean water.
It’s hard to imagine what a billion people looks like really, but one in eight might be easier. One in eight people in our world don’t have access to the most basic of human needs. Something we can’t imagine going 12 hours without. ‘

The other obvious reason to join a weight loss campaign is to lose weight. I had back surgery this spring and between not moving around and getting into some bad lifestyle habits I need to lose about 20lbs. right now. Erica’s Weight Loss For Water campaign seems like the perfect opportunity for me to support a good cause while getting myself back in shape.

The basic idea behind Weight Loss For Water is to get a group together to lose weight, and donate to charity: water for each pound lost. The suggested minimum goal is to donate $20 total since that buys water for one person for 20 years. This could be mixed up a number of different ways: $1/per pound, and shoot for 20 lbs over the course of 3 months, or $2/pound = 10 lbs, etc.

People can also be involved who don’t want to lose weight by sponsoring a person who is losing weight, for example Erica or me. If you want you could decide to donate a certain dollar amount for every pound we lose to charity: water or you could donate money at the end once we take it off. The campaign started on June 21st and will last for a three month period, ending in September. You can follow the campaign through the mycharity: water web site Erica has set up and through the Weight Loss for Water Facebook group.

I will be posting regularly about the Weight Loss For Water campaign as it is going on to update everyone on the progress of the weight loss and the fund raising. Feel free to either comment here with questions or send them to me through the contact section of this site.

Tags: charity water, developing nations, online donations, weight loss, well water

This entry was posted on June 28, 2010 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Health & Fitness, Twin Cities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.