Article: Bartender Turns Wine Into Clean Water

Bartender Turns Wine Into Clean Water
CNN

BLOWING ROCK, North Carolina (Nov. 30) -- Behind the bar at a local restaurant, Doc Hendley leans in to hear his customer over the band. "You like the pinot? Cool," he says.

It's a seemingly average interaction, but Hendley is not your average bartender. As he pours wine in the United States, he's also helping to save thousands of lives on the other side of the world -- and he's tapped into his regulars to help.

"[They] sit on the same stool, drink the same drink, pay the same tab every day. I felt like they really did want to be a part of something," Hendley says. "They just were waiting for somebody to bring that something to them."

That something is Wine to Water, Hendley's organization that provides clean water to people in developing countries through funds raised at wine tasting events.

Since 2004, Hendley has traveled to Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and Cambodia, working with local communities to build clean water wells and sanitation systems.

The 30-year-old first learned about the world's water crisis when he took a break from college, and his job as a bar-keep, to travel the world; he hoped it would ground his education and provide some direction. It did.

"I began seeing the figures [of] people that don't have access to clean water -- and it absolutely floored me," he recalls.

At least one in six people worldwide lack access to adequate amounts of safe water for drinking and hygiene, according to the United Nations. This contributes to diarrhea, the leading cause of illness and death, and translates to 1.5 million preventable deaths each year.

After returning to school, Hendley realized that just by using his ability to bartend and create relationships with people, he might be able to help the problem. At the bars where he worked, he solicited evenings to host wine tastings and provide information about the global crisis. By graduation, Hendley's "Wine to Water" events had yielded enough funding to implement water projects in the developing world.

He approached a local contact, Kenny Isaacs of Samaritan's Purse, with the intention of handing over the funds for their international charitable water projects. Instead, Hendley found himself in Sudan in spring 2004, training to oversee water projects and developing and installing water systems in zones deemed too dangerous for United Nations aide workers -- all in the midst of civil war.

"[I was] seeing these people living in conflicts, bullets whizzing by their ears -- yet their biggest concern was the huge loss of life because of the unclean water," he recalls. "That's when water changed from being my passion to the burden of my life."

After a year of service in Darfur, Hendley returned to the states and continued his fund-raising events while focusing on ways his group could improve upon other water project models.
"Throughout the desert there were bore holes [for wells] all over the place, they just weren't working," says Hendley. "Organizations would put a brand new, $15,000 bore hole in a village that already had one; [they] didn't stop to think that maybe that one is broken or just needs some parts."

Wine to Water is dedicated to achieving sustainability through education and empowerment of local community members, training them to install, maintain and repair their own water systems.

Hendley has found this approach reduces overhead costs, leaving more for investment in water initiatives and local economies. Because his operation is small, Hendley says he's less deterred by the instability of areas in dire need and is able to access pockets of the world that larger organizations may have to avoid.

To date, Hendley's group has worked in five developing countries, including India, bringing safe drinking water to more than 25,000 individuals in refugee camps, orphanages, schools, hospitals and a leper colony, as well as directly into hundreds of homes through the installation of bio-sand filters.

In the face of the overwhelming global crisis, Hendley says his work may be a drop in the bucket, but to him it's nothing short of a miracle.

"You can be a bartender in Raleigh, North Carolina; you can be just a regular anybody. And you really, really can change the world," he says. "You can touch thousands of lives. I'm walking truth of that."

Pro Bono Work Helps Firms Fight Economic Slump

Pro Bono Work Helps Firms Fight Economic Slump
Employees Volunteer Services to Charities and Nonprofits, Fostering Potential New Customer Relationships

By RAYMUND FLANDEZ

Some small businesses are following the recession playbook of the unemployed.

Just as many laid-off workers are volunteering more to fill up their free time and enhance their résumés, small-business owners and their employees are doing more pro bono services or volunteer work as a marketing and customer-relations strategy.

The recession hit Studio G Architects Inc. of Boston particularly hard last fall, causing 2008 revenue to drop 30% from the prior year, says Gail Sullivan, the principal. Clients of the 16-year-old architectural firm killed or put on hold 10 projects last October. With work slowing down, the company began providing 15 to 20 hours a week in pro bono services to keep employees occupied and potentially attract future contracts. It worked.

This spring the firm prepared preliminary design projects, such as a playground for severely handicapped children, for various charities. The projects later received full funding and Studio G obtained several contracts, which ranged in value from $16,000 to $100,000. "Offering the pro bono services has given us a chance to maintain our design vigor [and] resulted in people hiring us," Ms. Sullivan says.

For a small business that has lost clients or seen revenue-generating projects dry up, performing free work is a way to keep employees engaged while cultivating new relationships. Donating services to charity groups, churches, schools and other nonprofits can "increase local visibility, deepen local business ties and create opportunity for new business," says Christine Banning, vice president of marketing and communications at SCORE, a Washington-based group that provides free counseling to small businesses.

While it is a strategy that can bear fruit in a tough economy, she warns that small-business owners should set parameters in terms of how much they give away. With charitable giving falling in 2008 for the first time since 1987, dropping about 2% from a year earlier, according to a Giving USA study released last month, more nonprofits could be seeking donations from local businesses.

That is why Robert Politzer, president and chief executive of GreenStreet of New York Inc., made sure his pro bono work can benefit his company in the future.

At a networking event four months ago, Mr. Politzer met the director of the Hudson River Clearwater Sloop Inc., a nonprofit that aims to preserve and protect the Hudson River. Now, the green-building and consulting firm is serving as the volunteer construction manager of the group's new headquarters in Beacon, N.Y. As a public-relations move, GreenStreet is uploading videos on YouTube as it documents the pro bono work.

"This is only going to help expand our network, which should lead to more business for us," Mr. Politzer says.

Indeed, relationships matter now more than ever, says Audrey Murrell, professor of business administration at the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh. Those customers who get a first-hand look at a company's expertise during a pro bono project will likely turn to that company later, Ms. Murrell says.

"When there are fewer opportunities, there are more choices of whom people are going to do business with," she says, adding that people are going to "be more influenced by the relationship that you've cultivated."

One of the beneficiaries of eMazzanti Technologies' largesse this year was a local church, which had trouble setting up an outdoor wireless digital sign board. The Hoboken, N.J., technology company worked on the four-month project free of charge, saving the Our Lady of Grace church some $7,000 to $12,000.

In exchange, the company received an endorsement unlike any other. At a Mass, the pastor thanked the company in front of the congregation.

"My wife says, 'It's almost like a referral from God,' " says Carl Mazzanti, the 33-year-old chief executive.

With business ebbing, George Amorim, the co-owner of Divine Catering LLC of Madison, N.J., is offering free food and catering services this summer to local charities, in preparation for more business in the fall, when holiday parties are typically in full swing.

So far this year, he and his five employees have put on a Fourth of July barbecue party at a local children's hospital and donated a cheese tray for a bowling fund-raiser. In September, the company plans to cater a 10K running event. "We're trying to get the word out," says Mr. Amorim, whose business started in 2004 as a caterer for private-jet passengers. "All these things that we're doing now are for the future."

Steve DiFillippo, owner of Davio's, a 24-year-old Northern Italian steakhouse in Boston, shifted 30%, or some $20,000, of the company's advertising budget to pro bono work. This year, he says, not a week goes by that the company doesn't offer its services for charity events, or give away gift cards. Last year, the frequency was every other week.

"It's worth more to do charity work than to advertise in a local magazine," he says. "It's more like guerrilla marketing. People see that we're involved in the community."