Chris Long Ventures to Tanzania Africa for Clean Water

Chris Long recently took a trip to Tanzania with WorldServe International, as part of his Waterboys Initiative. On his trip, Long visited the rural Mfereji Village, a water deprived community of Tanzania in which Waterboys will be providing Sawyer Water Filters to its residents.

Last month, Long said, "I’ll be going on a clean-water trip, doing a project in June. I'm funding the first project that’s going to fall under the umbrella of Waterboys. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t really a big deal. WorldServe, the people I’m with, is remarkable. They’ve been doing this for over a decade and that’s why I trust them. They’re a Missouri group, and that’s what is really cool."

During his trip, Long also visited a community which has already received water from WorldServe.

"Most of the burden of people fetching the water falls on young girls in subsaharan Africa -- I think it’s like 75 percent," Long said. "So what these girls are doing, they’re walking miles at times in really hot weather to get this dirty, dirty water. If you saw where they were getting it from, it’s disgusting. But people don’t know any better - - that’s just the way it is. One exercise I’m planning on doing when I go is to take that walk with some of those girls and see what it’s really like, because I think unless you put yourself in that position, you don’t know."

Long ended the visit by traveling to the location of the first Waterboys Well site. The Tarangerie well will be provided by the funds raised in the St. Louis community during the Chris Long Foundation launch event hosted on May 20. The Well will be established as teh first St. Louis Rams well. One of the goals of Waterboys is to have 32 clean-water wells funded by each of the 32 NFL teams.

"It’s the first one. It’s not a game changer, but we’re hoping that when we get those teams adopting a community of 5,000 to 7,000 people, and raising the funds with their fanbase and their team, their fans being able to see the progress - - that when you implement clean water, it’s not just giving people something to drink," Long said. "Health improves, hygiene improves, the economy improves, agriculture shows up, education improves, kids aren’t missing school"

On the trip, Long interacted with the local communities and villagers and immersed himself in the needs of the region.

Read more about the Chris Long Foundation launch and check out photos from his trip (below).

My new Maasai buddies representing the 

I've got some big mitts for reference but look at the size of that cool Beatle. He was stuck on his back for who knows how long and I stopped to assist him.