Children Changing the World

To see what life was really like for African children, the O Ambassadors decided to walk in their shoes and help with daily chores. First on their to-do list was goat herding. Even with all of the teens working together, they spent most of their time chasing crafty runaways into bushes and cactus plants. "Five-year-olds do this, and they do it all the time every day, and the goats don't get lost and run away," O Ambassador Lia says.

Watch their attempts to round up the goats. 

Because there is no well nearby, children from the village must make water runs to the nearest source for their family's drinking, cooking and bathing needs. The O Ambassadors accompanied a group of local girls to the nearest water hole—an hour away. What they saw shocked them. "It didn't look like a river," Robert says. "It was dirt because that's the same river that people bathe in. They take their animals there." 

See the conditions of the river. 

The O Ambassadors quickly learned there are no other options for drinking water in the area. "At home, you turn on your tap, you have clean water openly available to you," Shannon says. "And then you go there and you see that, and you look to your left and there's cow dung there. And then I saw a girl actually step in it, rinse her foot off in the river, and then drink from it right afterward. And I just wanted to stop her and say, 'No, please, don't.'"

The O Ambassadors shared their clean water with the kids, but they decided something more needed to be done. When they returned from their trip, they raised enough money to build a well for that community. "It's only $5,000 to build a well in a developing country," Craig says. "It's possible."