IF RYAN HRELJAC'S classmates had asked him yesterday what he'd been doing during the past week, the Canadian teenager might have said: 'I flew to Beijing to raise money for charity. I gave speeches to schools and collected more than US$12,000.'
The seeds of Ryan's fundraising venture were sown in 1998, when his class of first-graders learned that people in Africa were dying because they lacked access to clean water, and that US$70 would be enough to drill a well and save lives.
'I just couldn't believe it,' he says of his teacher's talk. '[At home] I take nine steps and there I have it - clean water, right in my tap. It's just that easy. So, I decided that I should get a well for them.'
After getting home, he begged his parents for the money. No one paid any attention at first, but when he persisted in explaining that the cash would help children in Africa, his policeman father and community worker mother decided he could earn the money by doing extra chores.
After four months of cleaning windows and washing dishes, the six-year-old Ryan took a cookie tin containing US$75 to WaterCan, a local charity that supports sustainable water supplies. That was when he learned his earnings were only enough to purchase a hand pump; drilling a well would cost US$2,000.