Leverage

George and Molly Greene can rattle off every statistic related to our global water crisis, most of them quite sobering:  2,300 people die each day due to illness from inadequate drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene. Thirty-five percent of the global population lives without adequate sanitation. For children in developing countries, school attendance is reduced by the three hours necessary to go and collect water, which is usually still contaminated. 

The Greenes should know about water — for 20 years, they owned an environmental consulting company based in Charleston, South Carolina, testing water and environmental samples from across the U.S. But they weren’t involved in treating water. At least not until Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998, devastating much of Honduras’s water supply. The Greenes were familiar with Honduras from their church’s mission work, hosting some Honduran children who were undergoing surgeries in the U.S., and their daughter’s time teaching there after college. George learned about the devastation and the number of people impacted by the hurricane on the radio and felt like God really wanted them to respond — to do something. “So George emailed the Episcopal Bishop of Honduras, whom we had met, simply saying, ‘We know a little bit about water — what can we do to help?’ He didn’t think it would even get to him because of infrastructure damage in Honduras from the storm,” says Molly. One day later, back came the reply: “We need six water treatment systems.”

With a very specific request on which to focus, the Greenes were ready to move quickly. But there was just one problem — they had never designed and built water treatment systems. After searching the internet — in 1998, not what it is today — George came to the conclusion that “Water treatment is not rocket science. Let’s design our own,” recalls Molly. “He sat down at the table with a yellow pad and some engineering textbooks and within a few hours he had sketched out a design and given it to another engineer to build a prototype.” With help from the U.S. Air Force and the late Senator Strom Thurmond’s office, six water treatment systems and 50 tons of relief supplies were delivered to Honduras. Within two weeks, 16 people from the Greenes’ company were on the ground, installing water systems. “We didn’t know at the time that these were in locations that had really never had clean, safe water,” says George. The main water source for the region was from “the river of death,” a name coined by locals who knew it was heavily contaminated and made people deathly ill.

The Greenes also didn’t know that they had just created their second company, to do hands-on work — not work in a laboratory — to help address a worldwide water crisis. “We saw a world we hadn’t seen before,” says George, “and that’s always life changing. But for a while, we looked at this new service as strictly a business opportunity. For two years, we designed and installed water treatment systems in Honduras, Turkey, El Salvador, and Mozambique, often in response to a disaster.”

The Greenes quickly realized, however, that although the market is huge — 1.8 billion people without safe water — trying to sell something to people who lack money just doesn’t work for a for-profit business. It took them those first two years to figure out that their new venture needed to be mission oriented. “We were trying to do it our way,” says Molly. “But it wasn’t God’s way. We finally saw that God was working in our lives in such a mighty way, helping us to see that our plans were not necessarily His plans, and that we needed to seek Him, trust Him, and that He would help us figure out how to move forward.”

Molly was particularly captivated with what she read in a book called Halftime, by Bob Buford, which addresses how people can move from success to significance in their second half of life. After George read the book, he told Molly they needed to set aside a time to pray and to come to their own meeting of the minds. “We spent that day trying to discern God’s guidance and seeking direction for our lives,” says George. “We knew we wanted a change from our environmental business, which had become very focused on the federal government, rather than industry and individuals. Our business was far more successful than we ever dreamed, and as we look back now, we believe that God used our business to enable us to do what we’re doing today. We knew the Lord was calling us to focus on the water crisis.”

In 2001, the Greenes sold their company and started Water Mission, a non-profit Christian engineering ministry providing sustainable, safe water solutions to people in developing countries and disasters. Water Mission has about 50 employees in Charleston, augmented by numerous volunteers, and another 200 full-time staff in nine countries: Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Peru, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Indonesia. The Greenes learned through trial and error that employing indigenous staff in the countries in which they operate is critical. 

“There’s a very high failure rate for our type of work, primarily because it often creates dependencies and sends a message that people in these countries are incapable of helping themselves,” says George. “Local staff understand the culture and how best to work in these rural villages. We certainly train them on the technical part. The harder part is what we call community development, making a long-term investment in the people and the community. That includes education — in many cases, people don’t even know that dirty water can make them sick. These opportunities are when the real hard work takes place, but they’re also the most rewarding, because they’re where relationships are built and the Gospel is shared. The local staff members are our hands and feet in this effort. We’re providing the engineering expertise and the funding to support our operations, but they are making these long-term relationships happen.”

As of 2016, Water Mission has completed over 2,000 projects in 52 countries, and has helped more than three million people have clean water. Water Mission takes a comprehensive approach to the crisis with water, sanitation, and hygiene — or WASH, for short. About 150 projects are completed each year, with another 600 in various stages of completion. Each community managed project can take anywhere from 18 months to two to three years. Water Mission also helps in emergency situations — in the past few years they’ve responded to flooding in Malawi, a typhoon in the Philippines, massive refugee settlements in Tanzania and Uganda, an earthquake in Nepal, and the Ebola crisis in Liberia. After a disaster, people die faster from lack of water than from anything else. The mission is to get water to the people as quickly as possible, meaning within days. Often Water Mission’s disaster-response projects transition into community development projects. 

“We’re encouraged by what we’ve been able to accomplish with the prayers and support of so many, but we know we’re only scratching the surface of the need,” says Molly. “Still, each project serves, on average, 2,000 to 3,000 people. We do believe we’re transforming lives in multiple ways. Safe water for now and the ‘Living Water’ for eternity!”