That, to me, proved that Charity: Water isn't just a fashionable fad-it's an organization with a founder who is worth investing in for the long haul.Sherry Stearn fell into acting through her career in modeling. But perhaps the thing that moved me most was that the people who had supported him from day one-Jessica Stam, Marissa Sackler, Vance Thompson, Gordon Pennington-are still by his side today. He now has six people on staff and now works out of a real office. That means he's given 250,000 people clean water. In the two years that I've known Scott, he's drummed up $3.5 million and organized 624 projects in 11 countries. One-hundred percent of that money will go to freshwater projects in Central America, India, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The party raised $140,000, and the group's two-month-long partnership with Saks brought in another $400,000. More than 1,000 fiercely dressed fashionistas toting equally as well-groomed men on their arms were jammed into the 10th-floor space, and among them were designer Diane von Furstenberg, actress Mischa Barton, and socialite Emma Snowdon-Jones. So as I took in the landscape at Saks last week, I was overwhelmed by how far my friend has come. When Scott found out that the warehouse in Chelsea where they kept some of their supplies was going to be demolished, Lani called in desperation, and I helped a small crew of people move huge pallets of bottled water to a neighboring space. Charity: Water's theater of operations, a sprawling SoHo loft (where Lani let me do my laundry from time to time), was a cauldron of ideas, passion, and hard work, and I was always happy to lend an extra hand to their latest endeavor. Soon I found myself pulled into Scott and Lani's world. They started Charity: Water, whose goal was to fund clean and safe drinking water projects in impoverished communities, and began reaching out to the deep-pocketed, bold-faced names in Scott's rolodex.I was sympathetic to Lani's plight, so she moved into our tiny abode, and a week of Lani living out of a suitcase in the hallway … turned into six months. He returned to New York City and wrangled Lani to help him with his mission. But Scott was so moved by the lack of clean drinking water available abroad that he decided to bring the water message home. Scott had been an A-List party promoter in Manhattan for years, but he'd gotten tired of his flashy lifestyle, so he bought a camera and headed to Africa with aspirations of becoming a photojournalist. Lani was just getting back from Liberia, where she had met a guy named Scott Harrison aboard a Mercy hospital ship. Two summers ago, I had just moved into a Greenwich Village apartment when my new roommate asked me if her friend from high school, Lani Fortier, could crash on our couch for a week. I was running as fast as my three-inch heels would allow when something caught my eye: six of the store's celebrated windows were dressed up with Charity: Water displays. The sky was dark and gloomy as I raced toward Saks Fifth Avenue last Tuesday for the Charity: Water Summer Gala. Photograph by Jenn Sande and Parker Young via Charity Water. A Charity: Water display in the Saks Fifth Avenue window, in Manhattan.
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