Good Charlotte may be off the radar musically in early 2009, but they still are willing to help others in the world in need. Benji and Joel Madden recently traveled to Africa as part of the TAP Project, an effort to provide clean and safe drinking water to those in need. The current project asks folks to donate online or through local restaurants. One dollar can bring potable water to up to 40 people.
Joel Madden observed what's going on firsthand.
"It's tough because I wish Mohammed could have all the clean water and the things that we have at home, just, so easily. We have them right in our house. They have to walk 15 minutes with a wheelbarrow just to get water."
He talked about the work Unicef is doing in Africa.
"This trip just blew my mind with what UNICEF is doing. Going to a well in the middle of a continent, no one comes to this place. No one comes to this place, and to see a well that has a UNICEF stamp on it and I said the other day, 'This is why I work with UNICEF. This is why,' because you actually get to come up and see in the most remote places in the world there's people from UNICEF helping people every day."
Benji Madden said that the trip to Africa changes his perspective on life.
"You start, at least for me, I started seeing the UNICEF wells in Kaga Bandoro [Africa] that were clean, safe water, and every time I saw one I was like, 'Oh, thank goodness. There's a group of people that have some water to drink and that are actually getting to cook and drink and bathe in clean and safe water. It's weird how your perspective just changes in a week. What you thought were problems or what you thought were things the same way, at least for me, I don't know how I'm going to process it all. But I just know that driving through Kaga Bandora where a lot of work has been going on and seeing those wells, it's like now I'm having trouble sleeping at night thinking about the wells I saw and the kids we became friends with drinking out of those wells each and every day."
This week is safe water week and seeks to bring to light that over 900 million people in the world do not have access to clean drinking water, according to a UNICEF press release. The release also indicated that over 4,000 children die each day from water related sickness.
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Good Charlotte Joel Madden Observes Water Problems
