Doc Hendley
Founder and President of Wine to Water, CNN Hero, and expert on the power of relationships to transcend barriers.
Doc Hendley never set out to be a hero. In 2004, Hendley —- a small-town bartender — launched a series of wine-tasting events to raise funds for cleanwater projects and to bring awareness to the world’s freshwater crisis. He planned to donate the proceeds through traditional channels but instead found himself traveling to one of the world’s most dangerous hot spots: Darfur, Sudan. There, Doc witnessed a government-sponsored genocide where the number-one weapon wasn’t bullets-it was water. With limited funds, Doc realized that he couldn’t build new wells costing $10,000 a pop, but he could hire local workers to restore a damaged well for a mere $50 each. He’d found his mission. Doc was named one of the Top 10 CNN Heroes of 2009 and has written a book about his experience, Wine to Water: A Bartender’s Quest to Bring Clean Water to the World. He is an expert on the immense power of relationships to transcend perceived barriers. Today, Doc and Wine to Water continue to help stricken peoples repair and maintain water containment systems in places like Darfur, Cambodia, Uganda, and Haiti.
Hell or High Water: How One Man Turned Wine into Water and Transformed Customers into Crusaders
Doc Hendley was once a small-town bartender with a dream of changing the world through clean water. Through a series of simple wine-tasting events to raise funds for clean-water projects that he launched in North Carolina, he has created an international fundraising organization that provides clean water and sanitation to people in need around the world. In this speech, Hendley shares insights on how others can put simple ideas into action and use it to solve problems on the local, national, and international level.
Digging for Hope: Turning Wine to Water and Other Modern Day Miracles
In this inspirational keynote, Wine To Water founder Don Hendley teaches audiences a simple but profound principle for improving the world: do what they can with what they have. As the founder of an international fundraising organization that had humble origins, Hendley illustrates the immense power of relationships to transcend perceived barriers, proving the power of one to transform the impossible into the inevitable.
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