Raising Money for Living Water International Through Origami

Steve Pfost/Staff Photographer

Isabelle,8, left, and Katherine, 6, Adams have made origami ornaments to sell to raise money for water wells in needy countries. , Wednesday March 21, 2012.

(This news story is 3 years old- but still worth sharing).

Young Dallas sisters use origami to help fund water wells:

“Every 15 seconds a child dies because they don’t have clean water.” Isabelle Adams, 8, shares this tragic fact as she shows the handmade origami ornaments that she and her sister Katherine, 6, make to raise funds for Living Water International (water.cc), a Houston-based charity that drills water wells in Ethiopia and other developing countries.

The girls learned about Ethiopia’s need for clean water last year through a YouTube video highlighting a Midland company’s project (projects.lemishine.com). The video describes the plight of rural families whose only source of water often is polluted and many miles away.

The sisters and their parents, Ken and Deborah Adams, were moved by the video. “The children have to drink dirty water,” Katherine says. “And they have to walk so far to get the water that they can’t go to school.” Inspired to help, the Dallas family set out to raise money for a well to help others halfway around the world.

Ken, a Dallas physician whose mother was Japanese, suggested that they employ origami, the ancient art of folding paper into complex, three-dimensional shapes. His girls already knew how to fold some origami pieces, because he had taught the craft to them in the car-pool line.

Making origami Christmas ornaments became a family project they call Paper for Water. Through fundraisers at local businesses, orders from friends and a matching contribution from Midland company Envirocon Technologies (which makes Lemi Shine and other cleaning products) in 2011, Paper for Water raised the $9,200 needed to fully fund a well. It serves 520 people in Ethiopia.

Asked how it feels to pay for a well by themselves, Deborah Adams says: “We didn’t do it alone. Our friends, family and neighbors helped us make the ornaments and spread the word. We had lots of help.”

And now that the Ethiopian well is completed, what’s next?

“We are thinking about funding a well in northern India,” Deborah says. India’s poor, rural population faces the same water woes as Ethiopia and other African countries.

 Read more.

Steve Pfost/Staff Photographer

Deborah Adams, left, Katherine, 6, center, and Isabelle, 8, right, create origami ornaments to sell to raise money for water wells for needy countries at their dining room table., Wednesday March 21, 2012.

Hat tip:  Academic Origami