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January 30, 2006 Vol. 77,
no. 3S
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| LIFE
SUPPORT:
“Safe drinking water is an absolute precondition for overall
health and well-being,” says Ken Behring. “Water sustains
life.” (Photo provided by WaterLeaders)
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The simple
gift of clean water
Local philanthropist works for better H2O in developing regions
Come meet Ken Behring on Wednesday, February 1, at 4 p.m.
in Sibley Auditorium. In a conversation with Dean Richard Newton,
Behring will
discuss his passion for advancing technology that supports safe drinking
water. A reception will follow in Garbarini Lounge. The event is part
of the College’s View from the Top lecture series.
By age 27, Ken Behring was a millionaire and worlds away from the
poverty he’d experienced as a boy during the Depression. From
a young age, he was propelled to earn money and earn it as quickly
as he could. He sold newspapers, cut lawns, and worked in a lumberyard
as a youngster. Right out of high school, he sold cars, and it was
there, in the car industry, that he discovered a talent for salesmanship
and an eye for business. Soon he owned a dealership. Then several.
In the 1960s, he moved to Florida and parlayed his gifts into real
estate development, later moving to California to found and build Blackhawk,
an exclusive East Bay residential community. By the 1990s, Behring
was a billionaire, and the force that drove him to earn money took
a new direction. He began giving his fortune away to help those in
need.
During years of global travel, Behring saw poverty firsthand and immersed
himself in purchasing and personally delivering food, clothing and
medical supplies.
“In 2000, I went to Vietnam to distribute wheelchairs to physically
disabled people,” he says. “We traveled to a small village
outside Hanoi to deliver a wheelchair to a little girl, Bui Thi Huyen.
Because of her disability, she’d never been able to move by herself. She
sat terrified and crying on a pile of old rags in her parents’ house.
We put her in a wheelchair outside; I showed her how to place her hands
on the wheel rims and to move around. Finally, she moved the wheelchair
by herself. Then she broke into the biggest smile I’ve ever seen.
We’d given her mobility, freedom — and hope.”
Soon afterward, he started the Wheelchair Foundation, dedicated to
delivering thousands of wheelchairs to physically disabled people around
the world. Since its inception, the organization has donated over 400,000
wheelchairs to people in more than 130 countries.
This work led Behring to ponder the causes of such need. “Many
people in developing countries end up in wheelchairs because of illness
and disease that result from unclean water,” he concluded. With
the Wheelchair Foundation well established, Behring started a new philanthropic
organization, WaterLeaders Foundation. The new effort is initially
dedicated to delivering clean drinking water purification technologies
to schools in China, Mexico and Africa. The foundation focuses on small
water treatment systems that utilize ultra filtration, distillation
and reverse osmosis and supports prototype design and development.
Come meet Ken Behring on Wednesday, February 1, at 4 p.m.
in Sibley Auditorium when he presents “From Wheelchairs to Water: Help
for the developing world.” A reception will follow in Garbarini
Lounge. To learn more about Behring’s work, go to http://waterleaders.org/index.php.
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