Doc Hendley
People’s individual stories can be incredibly inspirational. Doc Hendley was raised by Christian missionaries and soon became a rebel and party-goer. As he said, “Everything was just about me and what I was doing that night.”
Then, a close friend pushed him to do something meaningful with his life, and he came upon the idea for a charity in 2004. Wine to Water.org was started in Boone, North Carolina and today has a budget of $500,000 with programs that repair wells and offer water filtration in countries like Uganda, India, Cambodia, Peru and Haiti.
He’s recently published a book called “Wine to Water: A Bartender’s Quest to Bring Clean Water to the World.”
After visiting the Sudan’s Darfur region and seeing how emaciated the women and children were, Hendley enrolled in a well-repair training program that was run by the United Nations Children’s Fund.
As Hendley explained, “That began the evolution of my nonprofit. I want all the projects I do to have local involvement, to have the local people getting their hands dirty and doing the work. That way, it’s more sustainable.”
While he faces many uphill battles, Hendley feels good about the nonprofit he’s created and the work that he is doing. As he said, “I kept asking: ‘Is this work worth it? And I said, ‘Yes.’ To see what happens when you give mothers an opportunity to give their children clean water so that they don’t have to bury any more of their babies from diarrheal disease, is so life-changing to me.”