Journey From Night Life to Serving Others

Harrison was working all night and sleeping all day. He knew he was lost and started reading about theology. He said, “I was trying to find a way back. I’d grown up with a Christian faith that I’d completely walked away from.” He spent some weeks for soul-searching amidst the party that was happening. In August 2004, Harrison quit his job and returned to New York City. He started applying to humanitarian groups including Oxfam, the Peace Corps, and the United Nations.

Harrison said, “I’m denied basically by all the organizations because no one knows how a nightclub promoter would be useful to their important, serious adult work,” Eventually, he was accepted by Mercy Ships, a non-profit organization of floating hospitals that brings medical help to those in need. To volunteer, Harrison paid $500 a month.

For his first trip in October 2004, he lived on a converted cruise liner off of the coast of Liberia and took pictures of the work the non-profit was doing. The poverty and pain he witnessed were profound. He took 50,000 photos of patients with conditions like leprosy, tumours, and cleft lips. He also took photos after they had been treated. He emailed the shots to the same email distribution list of 15,000 he had collected while working as a promoter in New York. As a result, people started donating to Mercy Ships and to support Harrison’s work.

Harrison said, “At that moment I realized that, wow, I could inspire positive action, compassion, empathy among people who, frankly, I didn’t even think had it in them. Back in New York City Harrison put on a gallery show in Chelsea with 109 of the photos he’d taken in Africa. The exhibition raised $96,000. Harrison gave all of the money to Mercy Ships and then went back for a second tour.

How he founded Charity: Water?

In the second tour of the Mercy Ships, he learned about the importance of having clean water, and many people lack access. Approximately three in 10 people around the world don’t have safe, readily available water at home, according to a July 2017 report from the World Health Organisation and UNICEF. What’s more, 844 million people do not have access to any basic drinking water service at all, according to the joint report. There are 263 million who have to spend more than 30 minutes per trip collecting water away from home, and 159 million who drink untreated water from streams and lakes. This and lack of access to sanitation result in the death of 361,000 children under the age of 5 each year, according to UNICEF and WHO. The deadly combination also results in the transmission of cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A, and typhoid.

Harrison was struck by the pain and suffering. But by his ability, he tried to make a difference. The change was uncanny. He’d gone from selling rich Manhattan club kids $10 bottles of water (which they often might not even open) to witnessing people die from a lack of clean drinking water in third world countries.