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Paper for Water is a local non-profit organization started almost eight years ago by Isabelle and Katherine Adams (5 and 8 years old at the time). The mission was born out of their desire to help other girls world-wide who do not get to go to school because they spend their days hauling water. Isabelle and Katherine also learned that a child died every 15 seconds from unclean water and they wanted to make a change. They decided to begin folding origami ornaments such as the one pictured here, and trade them for donations. The money they raised would go to water projects in developing countries. They began with the goal of raising $500 over the course of a month. By the end of two months, however, they had eclipsed this goal, raising nearly $10,000.
Following the success of this, they decided to keep at it. Over the past eight years they have raised nearly two million dollars and funded over two hundred water projects around the world.
IN spring of 2018, we held an ADROIT meeting at the Galleria, here in Dallas. Paper for Water was hosting an origami display there, and we learned about the organization during the meeting. President of ADROIT Origami, Travis Nolan, reached out and began volunteering with them in the fall.
Travis was so inspired by what he saw that he decided to found a project to raise twenty thousand dollars, enough to fully fund a well in Kenya. Working with some friends over about fifteen months, we taught and folded origami, gave presentations at more than thirty events, and took donations for ornaments. Venues ranged from birthday parties and summer camps to corporate meetings and investors’ summits.
We overfunded the well, raising more than thirty thousand dollars! The well was dug early this year at St. Michael’s Muluwa Secondary School, outside of Butere, Kenya. It services more than one thousand people, whose only prior source of water was an unsanitary spring, two kilometers away.