Boom.

Boom. That’s our prayer for 2015. We want this thing to blow up.

That’s a good thing.

I ‘spose the “New Year’s Blog” could just as easily be filled with highlights from 2014. But there is so much exciting stuff going on as we look ahead, I can only bring myself to give a sparse sentence to 2014. It was amazing.

Ok, a couple more sentences. What we did, by God’s grace, that was bigger than any other single milestone, was to cross the coveted half million mark in our metric for serving. We measure in terms of “people years” of water (that is, the number of people serves times the number of years the well or filter will last as stated by a trustworthy third party). In 2014, we crossed over 500,000 people years of water. For that we are proud and humbled.

Some big deals happened this year too-doors opened for lots of possibilities and probabilities one of which was being asked to be THE water at Creation Fest, a HUGE christian music festival in northwest PA. 50,000+ people and a chance for me to take the main stage to announce another big deal- a partnership with Turkey Hill (look for us in stores starting next month).

We led our first HKW missions team to the Dominican Republic and 2014 saw the completion of our 64th water initiative in India.

But we have only scratched the surface.

We are finally moving into the facilities of at least three new major distributors. The moment the first of them kicks in (Turkey Hill, in February) we automatically double our number of retailers. My hope is to see our sales increase by at least 5x as well as the contributions to Give 100.

2015 will mark the first time we have a sales force working for us. These aren’t technically Humankind employees. They’re folks who sell other brands of beverage and will be “pushing” Humankind as well. We’ve never had that before. Our numbers really are poised to explode.

.

Our goal for 2015 is to go nationwide. That is what we’re praying for and working towards.

Undoubtedly, it will be hard work. I love the quote on the Beautiful Meg’s fridge. It’s from Victor Frankl: “What is to give light must endure the burning.” There will be sacrifices. But the payoff is in saved lives. That really oughtta wake you up in the morning.

On the philanthropy side, the number of wells and filters continue to increase. And the increase is accelerating. An anonymous donor allowed for the purchase of our first Human-powered drill. It is slated to drill its first well in February. Which I hope to see.

We are holding a planning meeting/brainstorm-fest on how to see success at many of our new sales sites. The meeting will be the second week of January in Lancaster, PA. For details please contact me at my email, tj@humankindwater.org.

Thank YOU for all that you’ve done and will do to advance the mission of Humankind. It truly is more than just buying a bottle of water, it’s about changing a life. We here at HKW are humbled by the “tribe” that believes in, supports, and encourages this movement.

God bless and HAPPY NEW YEAR!