Promoter

How a club promoter helped change the world

After years of working as a club promoter, Scott Harrison decided he wanted to do something more meaningful with his life. So in 2004, he left New York City for the shores of West Africa, serving as a volunteer aboard a floating hospital with Mercy Ships, a humanitarian organization that offers free medical care in the world's poorest nations.

Upon returning to NYC, Scott had the idea to produce an exhibition of photos and videos from his trip, and use the event to raise money for charity. Scott put his skills as a promoter to work – and the exhibition raised more than $96,000 for medical care and freshwater wells in West Africa.

In the spring of 2006, Scott founded charity: water, a non-profit that has provided clean drinking water to more than a million people worldwide.

Scott defines his experience in terms of the impact he has made on others:

For me, charity is practical. It's sometimes easy, more often inconvenient, but always necessary. It's the ability to use one's position of influence, relative wealth and power to affect lives for the better. Charity is singular and achievable.

The dictionary defines charity as simply the act of giving voluntarily to those in need. It's taken from the word "caritas," or simply, love. In Colossians 3, the Bible instructs readers to "put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness."

Although I'm still not sure what that means, I love the idea. To wear charity.