Scott Harrison is a big-city guy. He's never even set foot in Iowa. But the 34-year-old New York City native said he can't help but notice something special is happening in the Quad-Cities and nearby Muscatine, Iowa.

People are contributing "an astonishing amount of money" to his nonprofit organization, charity: water, which accepts donations to help build new clean-water wells in impoverished parts of Africa, he said.

"It's phenomenal," he added during a recent telephone interview from his New York office.

When one of the people behind those efforts, Jody Landers of Muscatine, invited Harrison to come out and visit the Quad-City region next month, he immediately said, "Yes."

Harrison said he wants to meet Landers and the others from this area who are involved and to offer his heartfelt thanks.

He also hopes to inspire even more people - through a rigorous series of speaking engagements - to give to the local Water for Christmas campaign's second year of holiday season fundraising efforts.

"It just sounds like such a generous group of supporters," he said. "I'm from the city, and I talk to a lot of people who are skeptical and a little harder. There's a real warmth and a generosity that's surrounded everyone involved with this in Iowa."

The group's efforts are even more organized this year, with further fundraising events that begin with a four-mile walk Saturday - and corporate sponsors as well.

They also are going to open an Etsy Web site store with new handcrafted Africa-related items for sale, and all proceeds going to charity: water.

Why water?

The world grew a little smaller for the Landers family when Jody, now a stay-at-home mother of six, and her husband, Andy, adopted twins - Zeke and Kora - from the African nation of Sierra Leone about 1 1/2 years ago.

They saw firsthand the hardships caused by the severe shortage of clean water there and wanted to help.

Lightly touching her charm bracelet shaped like the African continent, Jody Landers said it is senseless for people to die every day because they do not have clean water to drink. The solution is so close and easy to tap into - just under the ground.

So, after researching charities that could help, she and several friends helped begin the first Water for Christmas effort in the autumn of 2008. Their mission was to inspire people to consider donating money - in any amount - to build new wells in Africa instead of buying materialistic gifts at the holidays.

Their efforts worked. Thanks to Quad-City region support, and a growing online presence via various blogs and Facebook, the campaign was able to raise $59,000 in about two months. That money was enough to build 12 new wells in Africa.

Harrison's organization says the average well costs about $5,000, depending upon how far underground the water is.

All of the money collected through the Quad-City Water for Christmas efforts has been going toward well projects in Liberia, where Harrison lived for about a year. During his upcoming visit, he plans to bring photos from that part of Africa to show how much donations can help.

"I just really hope to connect them to some of the people who are being served," he said.

Giving year-round

Landers said last year's Water for Christmas efforts were successful and a lot of fun - including a Dancing for Water component that had people dancing in online videos to help inspire others to donate to the cause.

Organizers realized that if they could raise that much awareness and money in only two months that they had the potential to collect even more if they planned more and farther ahead of time, she said. People wanted to give. They just needed the opportunity, she added.

So, Landers and a core group of at least 30 others - bringing "different talents and spheres of influence," she said - have been meeting every week over the past year, organizing the next Water for Christmas efforts.

One of those people is Tom Randleman, a math teacher at West Middle School in Muscatine. The school's students raised $6,000, enough money to build one well, through various donation efforts in the spring. They're raising money again in conjunction with Muscatine-area charities.

Meanwhile, Randleman is offering to take $20 donations from people who want him to paint the H2Africa logo on their driveways. He has painted the logo on at least 30 driveways in Muscatine so far and is willing to travel to the Quad-Cities to do more.

"It draws the attention of other people in the neighborhood, and then they come over and ask about it," he said. "It's an awareness."

"If we raise our voices, it could literally mean world change," Landers added. "It could be huge."

The Landerses' twins just turned 4 years old.

Do the children understand their adoptive parents' passion for clean water in their African homeland? Maybe not. But they will.

"It will be part of their story," Landers said. "God used their little lives to inspire a lot of people to think outside ourselves and make the world a little smaller."