Nicholas D. Kristof - A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity

Hope is like a path in the countryside. Originally, there is nothingbut as people walk this way again and again, a path appears.

LU XUN, CHINESE ESSAYIST, 1921

A Meaningful Life

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

R achel charity:water that drills wells in impoverished villages around the world. Rachel aimed to raise $300 for her birthday, and she closely tracked the contributions that came in on her birthday page on the charity:water website.

All kinds of people, she saw, were celebrating occasions by raising money on the site to drill wells for needy people living half a world away. Liz and Kirk Ward married and used their well donation page as a wedding registry. Ezra Magaram raised $5,804, more than twice his goal, for his bar mitzvah. Frank and Megan Danna marked the birth of their daughter, Emma, by hosting a charity:water page that raised $735. Timmy Ho gave up alcohol for a year and raised $1,306. Erica Hanna turned a weight-loss struggle into a money-raising effort for a well. Rachel was excited to see all these people raising money so successfully, but her own birthday campaign felt a bit dispiriting. She raised only $220, much less than her goal.

Samantha Paul. After the haircut, Rachel announced that she would grow her hair long again and donate it to Locks of Love after a few years. And thats what she did. Rachel found giving to be enormously satisfying, and thats what led her with great eagerness to set up a birthday fund-raiser through charity:water. It was just frustrating, though, that each time she went on the Internet, full of hope, to see her birthday page, the total would be unchanged and short of her target.

Then, less than six weeks after her ninth birthday, tragedy struck. Rachel was driving with her family on the highway when two trucks collided. One truck spilled logs onto the highway, causing a thirteen-car pileup. The Beckwith car was in the middle, and although other passengers in the vehicle werent seriously hurt, Rachel was critically injured. In the next few days, as friends and church members comforted the family and prayed for Rachels recovery, they also sought some more tangible way of showing solidarity. Remembering her birthday campaign for clean water, they began to donate to it on the charity:water website. Contributions climbed past her $300 goal, then past $1,000. As the little girl struggled for life in a hospital bed, and with everyone feeling helpless, donations surged past $5,000 and then $10,000. Family members gathered around Rachels hospital bed were soon able to whisper to hernot knowing if she could hear them through her comathat she had set a record by exceeding the $47,544 that Justin Bieber had raised for charity:water on his birthday. I think she secretly had a crush on him, but she would never admit it, says Samantha Paul. I think she would have been ecstatic.

It became evident that Rachel would never recover, and her family made the heartbreaking decision to remove her from life support. She died surrounded by a loving family and by a growing legend about a little girls last fund-raiser. People all over the world, moved by Rachels big heart, went to the website and donated, often in $9 increments. A five-year-old girl sent the entire contents of her piggy Rachels campaign raised $1,265,823enough to provide clean water for 37,000 people. Social networks managed to transform a tragedy into something triumphant as well, a celebration of Rachels life and values that, halfway around the world, will save childrens lives and improve their health. A year after Rachels death, Samantha traveled to Africa and was stunned to see the impact that her young daughter had had on so many Ethiopian villages.

For her ninth-birthday party, Rachel Beckwith aimed to raise $300 to help build a well through charity:water.

For a mother, there is of course no salve that can erase the pain of losing a nine-year-old daughter. But Samantha Paul was gladdened to see what her daughter had accomplished, and she was moved that the villagers were both giddy at getting clean water and profoundly sympathetic about her loss. Giving really, really moving. As the vehicle drove away from that village, bouncing over rutted roads, Samantha Paul hunched over and cried.