CNN Heroes: Bartender's Nonprofit Turns 'Wine Into Water' For Developing Countries

You can get your cabernet and pinot from North Carolina-based bartender Doc Hendley, but you'll also get a side of water and some sobering news.

Wine to Water, Hendley's nonprofit, raises funds through wine tasting events in order to bring clean water to people in developing countries. It was after traveling the world and learning about the global water crisis that the 30-year-old realized he could combine his bartending and people skills by hosting eye-opening wine tastings at the venues where he worked.

The wines are paired with information about the global water crisis to inform and educate participants that at least one in six people around the world do not have access to safe drinking water, which translates to 1.5 million preventable deaths from diarrhea every year.

Hendley's group has traveled to five developing countries since 2004, working to build clean water wells and sanitation systems with local communities. Wine to Water's projects span the world from Peru to Cambodia, training individuals to construct bio sand-filters, drilling wells and constructing water and sanitation centers to teach locals. The organization has brought safe drinking water to more than 25,000 individuals in orphanages, refugee camps, schools and hospitals.

These efforts have earned Hendley the distinction of being one of CNN's Top Ten Heroes of 2009.

Here are all the tools you need to host your own Water to Wine fundraiser.

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Comments

[mamacat]

This is a wonderful story, but when will we start helping these people to gain the power to control their family size? Is birth control understood at all in that culture?

Within three more years we will have increased our numbers to 7 billion, and we need to do something about this trend. Any improvements in health and living conditions in third world countries will amount to nothing in the long run if we do not get the ticking time bomb of the increasing global population under control.

[brady61995]

well done doc keep it up.

[ForVivi]

Thank you Doc Hendley. You are an inspiration.