Wishing for water

Tigard 10-year-old Tyler Nguyen is raising money to build wells in Africa

By Geoff Pursinger

The Times, Jul 29, 2010, Updated Aug 1, 2010 (4 Reader comments)

Jaime Valdez / The Times

Templeton Elementary School fourth-grader Tyler Nguyen is saving his pennies to build a well in Africa to help people get clean water. Tyler got the idea while drinking a glass of water.

Tyler Nguyen is not your typical 10-year-old.

While most of his friends are spending their summer vacations playing video games, sleeping in and going to the movies, Tyler is thinking about water.

Most of us never give it a second thought. Turn on the faucet, water comes out. Done.

But for Tyler Nguyen, a glass of water changed his life.

“I was getting a drink of water and I remembered hearing about something I heard my grandmother had said to my aunt,” said Tyler, sitting on a large comfy couch in his home off Canterbury Street. “She had been talking about how hard it was for my cousins to get water, and I thought ‘I want to change that.’”

Tyler’s cousins were missionaries stationed in Kenya during a drought in 2008.

“People have a hard time finding water,” Tyler said. “Sometimes they have to walk five miles to find water, and then that’s full of bacteria and people get sick and die.”

Tyler decided it was time for a change. He told his mom that he wanted to build a well in the village his family stayed in.

Tyler looked around online. It would cost anywhere from $1,200 to $1,800 to build one well.

Tyler’s allowance is $4 per week.

“So I started with that,” he said.

Filling a small bowl with his change, Tyler founded his own charitable organization “Tyler’s Water Wish.”

He took his bowl of change to school and asked his classmates to donate pennies, nickels and dimes. By the end of the school year he’d made about $100, he said.

Then he started hitting up his friends and family and raised about $200 more.

His church, Calvin Presbyterian, found out about what Tyler was doing and decided to help out. They’ve hosted get-togethers for kids, and Tyler fundraised at the church’s summer Vacation Bible School.

As of this week, he’s close to $1,000, after his church held a special fundraiser at Cook Park.

“It was a super-soaker party,” Tyler said. “But if parents didn’t want to get wet they had to buy super-soaker insurance.”

Parents who gave a donation got to stay dry.

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