While in Haiti visiting completed Generosity Water projects last year, our team spent a few days with our local partners to identify new communities in need of clean water. More than just seeing communities through site visits and surveys, we were there because we wanted to hear them. Our goal was to find someone brave enough to share their story with us and allow us to share it with the world.

One of our first stops was a community two hours driving distance outside of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital. We drove as far as the roads would take us, and walked 20 minutes into the mountains to visit Dessables Dortel community.

That’s where we met Elisil. A graceful woman in her seventies, she was clearly well respected in this community. Through our translator, we explained that we were there to help bring clean water to her community and asked her to show us where she gathered her water. She kindly agreed to walk with us. Because of the language barrier, we didn’t realize that we were going to be walking for about 1.5 miles to their water source, but hey, if a 70 year-old woman could walk the distance, how could we complain?

After a long and sweaty hike into the mountains, we reached a spring in the ground and found many members from Elisil’s community filling buckets of water to take home to their families. Without hesitation, Elisil filled up her bucket full of water and started to carry it back home. Jake, Generosity Water’s videographer, and I walked right behind her, filming her journey. After about 10 minutes of just watching her, Jake and I looked at each other with nothing in our hands and said to each other “how can we let this woman carry this bucket down and not even help her”? We offered to carry the bucket for her, but Elisil insisted that we did not do it alone. She insisted that she carry the water WITH us, and so we picked up the bucket, our hands holding it side-by-side, and struggled down the mountain together.

When we finally made it down the mountain and back to her home, we shared a moment that I will never forget: she gave Jake a kiss on the cheek and said “Vous et Moi” which is French for “you and I”. Our translator explained that she was saying that you and I together have carried this water down the mountain, just as you and I are going to bring clean water to this community. This moment was so beautiful for us because we realized the power of her statement. Change always starts with “you and I”. Together we can do so much more than we ever do alone.

To this day, I am inspired by Elisil. Her courage, her passion, her strength, and her hope for a better future. I am reminded that we can solve this crisis, but we must work together. Us and her. You and I. Vous et moi.

Watch Elisil’s story here.

— Jordan Wagner, Generosity Water CEO