Sam Fayiah's story: My story began in a country ravaged by conflict. What I encountered at birth and as a kid growing up was undoubtedly a matter of life and death. The first Liberian Civil War starting in 1989, the second Civil War ended in 2003. The conflict ended lives of over 250,000 people and left the country in near-complete economic devastation. At a very young age, my family and I faced destitution during the war. We navigated from one community to another never finding a safe place to land on. Food and clean drinking water were in every case scant. Hunger and malaria consumed my family and those around us. My grandmother and I lived at a displaced camp for a few years. We lived in a mud brick house, with palm branches and a tarp as our roof. Rainy season brought leaks and lack of sleep, but we had no other option to wait for the rain to stop to move spots. At the camp, we would pray and hope what WHO (World Health Organization) and WFP (World Food Program) would come to our aid. WFP would bring food such as corn meal and vegetable oil but was often not sufficient enough for everyone in the camp. We would eat one, sometimes two, meals a day depending on the amount distributed. Following the war, we still faced a major water crisis. As a kid, I would walk to a nearby open well to fetch water to wash my clothes and for my grandmother to cook.

At the age of 16, I made the decision it was time to make a change for a better life for myself. My mom, who was already living in the US, helped me do what I needed to move. Once in the United States, I attended Lincoln High School in Philadelphia. After high school, I spent three semesters at The Community College of Philadelphia before becoming a personal trainer. Now it is my mission to give back to the town I called home through Sam's Mission for Liberia. We are raising money to add not one, but hopefully two, more drinking wells. These drinking wells will give communities a safe source of drinking water. Clean water is something that we don't think twice about because we can walk into our kitchen and get water from the sink or filtered in our refrigerator. Help me help these communities by making a donation to live a cleaner, healthier life.