Wine To Water

By Caroline Monday

During his senior year at N.C. State, Doc Hendley, now Wine To Water executive director, asked himself a question many college seniors find themselves asking, “What am I going to do with my life?” What Hendley decided was to do something that would make a difference.

As he worked his way through college as a bartender, Hendley said he took special notice of patrons of the bar who came nearly every night. He wanted to find a way to use their habits to benefit others. That’s when he came up with “Wine To Water,” fundraisers held in bars to help efforts to bring sources of clean water to those in need. Hendley cited that clean water is the number one need in the world and that 70 percent of all hospital visits in Africa are due to unclean water.

Hendley’s inspiration for the event’s name came from the story of Jesus’ first miracle in the Bible. In the story, Jesus turns water into wine. Hendley sold wine to support those in need of clean water.

The fundraisers flourished in Raleigh and, after his graduation, Hendley wanted to continue his work providing people in undeveloped countries with clean water. He told Kenny Isaacs of this desire and Isaacs hired him to work with Samaritan’s Purse in Darfur, Sudan. Samaritan’s Purse is a nondenominational Christian organization that helps victims of war, poverty, disease, famine and natural disasters meet their day-to-day needs.

While in Darfur, Hendley met Isaacs’ son, Coy Isaacs, now Wine To Water projects director. Hendley and the younger Isaacs said it was in Darfur that they started dreaming of the nonprofit they recently established in Boone, called Wine To Water after Hendley’s first efforts to provide the world’s needy with clean drinking water.

Isaacs and Hendley said they observed other organizations working to help the people of Darfur and took ideas from them and formed their own organization. Hendley said they also observed those organizations flaws, which they want to avoid in their own work.

Hendley noted that many organizations work to provide education, AIDS information and food, but none of those efforts will ultimately succeed if the people they serve do not have clean drinking water.

Isaacs said he saw children in Darfur who walked three hours each way to fetch drinking water for their families. When children spend such a large part of their day fetching water, they have little time for education. Hendley said their work greatly affects women and children, the family members who fetch the water. When these people have convenient access to clean drinking water and proper sanitation, they have more options for improving other parts of their lives.

Hendley said he has seen organizations that send international staff members into communities who complete a task, such as building wells or setting up sanitation systems, and then leave the community to fend for themselves. He said these communities are often left without the resources to maintain and repair what the aid organization built.

“We really want to empower communities around the world,” Hendley said. Wine To Water will send as few international staff members as possible to a community to set up a project and then hire a localized staff to keep the water and sanitation systems running. Most of the communities the organization will help are very rural, he said, as urban areas are more likely to be provided for.

Hendley and Isaacs said that, while a large portion of their work concentrates on communities in other countries, they are eager to become more involved in their local community and to support local causes. One of their goals is to make the people in the United States who support their cause feel connected to the work they are doing abroad. They plan to maintain that connection in part through video blogs on their Web site winetowater.org.

In April, Hendley and Isaacs will travel to Guatemala, Cambodia and Ethiopia to asses the needs of the people in those areas and to plan for projects they want to have up and running by May of 2007. They have set a fundraising goal of $37,500 to support those projects.

For more information or to learn how to contribute, visit winetowater.org.