Four La Cañada Flintridge students are keeping up their efforts to improve the lives of others by starting on their ninth and biggest fundraiser, this time to help people in the African nation of Niger get the water sources they need to survive.
Mackenzie Nelson, 17, her brother Bennett, 15, and their close friends Adam Neiberger, 16, and Bronwyn Vance, 17, are seeking to raise $25,000 through their nonprofit to donate wells to four villages in impoverished Niger.
The activism started years ago when the Nelson siblings, then 8 and 7, respectively, spent a summer in Jamaica on a family trip.
While the family spent the day in a small town, Mackenzie and Bennett Nelson played with boys who lived there. When the siblings went to get some water, they realized something was off.
“We were really confused because we hadn’t really known that people don’t have access [to water], because we literally have it in our tap,” said Mackenzie Nelson, adding that the Jamaican boys had followed them to the car where the water bottles were.
Their mom eventually gave the boys the whole case of water bottles and told the siblings that access to clean water can be really hard to get.
“And ever since then, [it] really opened me and my brother’s eyes [on] how important the clean water is and, obviously, we need it to live. And the fact [that] people don’t have access to that, it was just mind blowing,” said Mackenzie Nelson.
When they got back home from the trip, she and her brother immediately wanted to do something to help others, so they did beach cleanups and other community services like sing holiday songs in nursing homes, but decided they wanted to do something bigger.
That’s when “we brought Adam and Bronwyn in,” said Mackenzie Nelson.
Neiberger and Vance joined the siblings in their efforts.
The four of them then started their nonprofit, H2O — Help to Others — when they were in middle school. After that, their activism took off.
“It was a bit of a process to become a nonprofit organization, because at first, we were just kind of having fundraisers and donating to the Pasadena homeless shelter,” said Mackenzie Nelson.
But they started to raise a lot of money, so they made it official by starting a website and contacting other nonprofits to partner with them.
Vance noted all the fundraising they started to do, like delivering doughnuts to families they knew, doing car washes, walking dogs and holding bake sales, to name a few.
With the money they raised, “we bought cases of water and donated them to the homeless shelters in L.A., and we have donated 10 bikes for people to have access to water, so they don’t have to walk to water sources. … We are trying to get bigger and bigger,” said Vance.
The students — Neiberger and the Nelsons attend La Cañada High School and Vance attends Harvard Westlake — have donated 2,500 bottles of water to two Los Angeles homeless shelters. They’ve also have raised thousands of dollars to buy 10 specially designed Buffalo bicycles, which are made to handle the challenging African terrain, through the Chicago-based nonprofit World Bicycle Relief.
“This is really important. Because the little girls or the females are usually the ones that have to go walk [four to six miles], or however long it is to get water for their family, so they can survive,” Bennett Nelson said. “But with these bikes, these girls can cut down hours of their trip to the reservoirs or the wells that are really far away from their village. So they can maybe get an education. They can do everything else except going four to six miles to get the water that they need.”
All of the past fundraisers have been based in LCF and the teens have received funds from the local community.
“After college, we obviously want to continue this going, maybe when we have a bit more experience on our shoulders and age on our side. Maybe we’ll get more and more people to help because we want to make it a bigger thing,” Mackenzie Nelson said. “This has inspired me to study political science and environmental science in college and get more involved because it really interests me.
“I think after college, we’ll definitely consider making a bigger nonprofit and adding more people. We’re trying to spread awareness to more people, and we don’t want it to be as small as it was in the past,” she added.
Vance agreed with Mackenzie Nelson and could see a bright future for the nonprofit.
“I feel like more nonprofits like this one are really important for people to start because it just shows that you really care about the future of the next generation, and also people who are affected by climate change, and don’t have the same opportunities as we do,” she said. “So I think it would be cool if we could like pass it down to the next generation to continue this nonprofit.”
The four teens have learned a lot through the process, including to be grateful to have basic necessities.
“Personally, I’ve learned how lucky I am and how fortunate, because we live in such a prosperous town and we’re so lucky to have what we have,” Mackenzie Nelson said.
“I definitely agree with Mackenzie. It taught me how grateful I should be because of how fortunate I am. But it also really taught me how much of an impact people can make on other people around the world by not even doing too much,” Bennett Nelson said.
Neiberger said he loves that they are able to help people get the water they need after learning how difficult it can be to obtain it.
As for obstacles that the group faced, they mentioned being scared to ask for money, the challenge of being young and not bringing in as much money as they hoped for in a fundraiser.
Neiberger learned from not raising enough money to look on the bright side of things.
“Be all right with maybe not reaching your goal, but [realize] you did raise some money,” said Neiberger.
Among other lessons learned, Bennett mentioned how social media have played a great role in their efforts to spread the message.
As far as teamwork is concerned, the four teens are closer than ever.
“We’re all best friends and we’ve been family friends forever,” said Mackenzie Nelson. “I feel like we just know how to support each other and help each other in the best way possible.”
So, if one of them has a school-related activity to attend, another will step in and take over that person’s duties with the nonprofit for the day.
“We all share the burden of the organization together because we care so much about it,” said Vance.
The group has monthly meetings to plan its next fundraisers and brainstorm.
More recently, the teens and the nonprofit have launched their biggest fundraiser yet.
“In honor of World Water Day on March 22, we are working to raise $25,000 so we can donate four wells to four different villages in Niger, a west African country that is among the three poorest countries in the world,” reads the letter they sent out to the LCF community and online.
“These wells will provide a lifetime supply of clean drinking water to roughly 4,000 people,” the letter also says.
The nonprofit is partnering with Wells Bring Hope, a Los Angeles-based organization that devotes 100% of its donations to drilling water wells in Niger.
Unlike in its other fundraisers, the team of teens plans to reach people from across the United States and Canada to donate through social media and their website.
Anyone who is interesting in donating can visit wellsbringhope.networkforgood.com/projects/187673-h2o-helptoothers-s-fundraiser.
First published in the March 23 print issue of the Outlook Valley Sun.
