His teacher told the class that children in Africa had to walk miles for clean water — and that a well cost $70. Ryan Hreljac was six years old. He went home and earned $70 doing chores. Then the grown-ups told him the truth: a well actually cost $2,000. Most stories end there. His was just getting started.
It was January 1998, in Kemptville, Ontario. Ryan sat in his Grade One class while his teacher, Nancy Prest, explained what life looked like for children on the other side of the world: walking miles, every day, for something that came out of Ryan’s tap.
Told that a well cost $70, he did what a six-year-old with a plan does — he earned it. Four months of chores. Seventy dollars. Mission complete, as far as any kindergartner could have known.
The $2,000 lesson
Then came the real number. A well didn’t cost $70. It cost $2,000.
Adults, handed a number 28 times bigger than the one they’d worked for, usually file the idea under “nice thought” and move on. Ryan Hreljac raised the rest — within about a year, the full amount was together, and in January 1999 he sent it to WaterCan. That year, the first Ryan’s Well was drilled at Angolo Primary School in northern Uganda.
Read that sequence the way this page reads every story: a six-year-old was given a problem sized for a child, solved it, discovered the problem was actually adult-sized — and solved that too, before he was old enough to ride a two-wheel bike with confidence. The obstacle wasn’t the money. The obstacle was believing a first-grader couldn’t move it. He never believed it.
The foundation, founded by a kid
In 2001, he founded the Ryan’s Well Foundation — an organization that began with a Grade One lesson and one boy’s refusal to accept the corrected price tag as a stopping point.
This page tells a lot of stories about adults with platforms moving big numbers. Ryan’s belongs near the front of the file for a different reason: there was no platform. There was a classroom, a teacher telling the truth about the world, four months of chores, and a second, harder fundraising climb that he finished anyway. Influence is just what happens after somebody small decides the problem is theirs.
Somewhere, children at a primary school in northern Uganda drank from a well that exists because a six-year-old in Ontario did his chores and then refused to stop. That’s not a small story. That’s the template.
Join the conversation
He was SIX — $70 in chores, then $2,000 raised when the real price came out. What could the kids in YOUR family start, with a true story and a number to chase? And do the children in our lives hear enough true stories about the world to act on one? Tell us below.
Source note: Ryan Hreljac’s account — learning in his Grade One class in January 1998, from teacher Nancy Prest in Kemptville, Ontario, that children in Africa walked miles for clean water; being told a well cost $70 and earning the $70 in chores over four months; learning the actual cost was $2,000 and raising the rest within about a year; sending the money to WaterCan in January 1999, with the first Ryan’s Well drilled that year at Angolo Primary School in northern Uganda; and founding the Ryan’s Well Foundation in 2001 — is from the World of Children honoree profile and the Ryan’s Well Foundation history. Lifetime totals for the foundation change over time, so none are stated here.
Tell us in the comments below - we read every single one, and the best takes get featured.
