This month, the bottled-water company Humankind Water beat out over 4,000 other products to reach the "top ten" in an American Idol-style contest run by Wal-Mart called Get on the Shelf. The contest pitted start-up companies and entrepreneurs against each other, as voters submitted a million votes in total to tell Wal-Mart which product they would like to see, as the title suggests, on the shelf of their local superstore.

Now, the top 10 products are competing against each other again, in a second round of voting that ended yesterday. The top three finalists will be carried on walmart.com, and the overall winner will also "get on the shelf" in select Wal-Mart stores.

Get on the Shelf is the first contest of its kind by a major retailer, according to The Wall Street Journal's Market Watch. It's also an opportunity, says Humankind Water founder T. J. Foltz, to help right one of the major wrongs in our world: the lack of clean drinking water.

We've seen the statistics so many times we've almost become immune, Foltz says. Some 10,000 children die every day from a lack of clean drinking water. Sitting on his couch one morning two years ago, praying, Foltz says he came up with an idea: launch a bottled-water company that gives 100 percent of its net profits toward clean water efforts around the globe.

Foltz's background isn't in business or marketing. "I've spent most of my adult life in youth ministry," Foltz says, although he's also worked for Scripture Union and the philanthropic adviser Geneva Global. And Foltz did not set out to make Humankind Water overtly Christian.

"We very intentionally did not put crosses and hallelujahs all over the bottle, because we wanted anybody with a heart for philanthropy to buy our water," Foltz notes. "At the same time, however, anybody who Googles 'T. J. Foltz' will find a youth speaker."

"There are areas of the world where people are literally dying for a drink," Foltz says. Meanwhile, the bottled water business is a multibillion-dollar industry—if some of those billions of dollars of profit could be moved to support clean water for those who don't have it, "we could virtually eliminate the clean-water crisis."

Clean water efforts ranked number 1 out of the 10 most cost-effective aid strategies, according to Christianity Today's February cover story. And Humankind Water is partnering with water relief organizations whose track record is already proven: Water Missions International, Ethiopian Rainwater Harvesting Association, Ugandan Water Project, Living Water International, and Blood:Water Mission.

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The key is sustainability, Foltz says. As a part of that, "we don't dig our own wells," he says. "That's not our area of expertise. And not every area in need of clean water calls for the same solution." So Humankind Water instead gives money to relief organizations who know best how to handle the water crisis in their specific area.

"You don't have to dig a well in Haiti," Foltz says by way of example. Water is plentiful, and it's filthy—often little more than sewage. So the best course of action is to filter that water, not dig new wells. Humankind Water will donate 100 percent of its profits to other clean-water nonprofits, who in turn will do the on-the-ground work appropriate to specific areas in need of clean water.

Humankind Water saw their very first bottle of water in October of last year. Then in late January, a friend of Foltz's e-mailed him about Wal-Mart's Get on the Shelf contest. "Our entire marketing plan got put on hold, and we went all in on plans to try and win this competition," Foltz says. "Literally a half an hour after I got that e-mail, we were strategizing on how we could try and win this thing."

The irony of using Wal-Mart as a means to effect positive change isn't lost on Foltz. "Wal-Mart has a bit of a reputation for being ruthless," he says. "I don't think that selling water in Wal-Mart is a perfect vehicle. But I think it's one that will work." Why? Because 84 percent of Americans shop at Wal-Mart, according to the Pew Research Center. And the recent Wal-Mart bribery scandal notwithstanding, money spent on Humankind Water, no mater where it is spent, will directly impact efforts to provide clean water.

"I have no heartfelt affinity for Wal-Mart one way or the other," Foltz concludes. "But it's the biggest retailer in the world. There is no higher priority than saving children's lives, especially children who are dying needlessly. I'm not going to wait for [Wal-Mart] to be perfect, if we have an opportunity [now] to work toward the greater good."

"I don't feel like I need to be Wal-Mart's defender. What we're trying to do is we're trying to sell this product in the biggest outlet that we can, to make the most money we can, to save the most lives."

Watching the video on the Humankind Water website, Foltz's passion is evident. "If we win this contest," Foltz says, "and we save these tens of thousands of lives, that will multiply itself out. There will be generations, because of what we have done."

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