08/08/2026
A first-grade teacher wrote a number on the chalkboard and thought nothing of it.
Seventy dollars.
To her, it was simply an example used during a lesson about charities. To a six-year-old boy named Ryan Hreljac, it sounded like a solution.
It was 1998 in Kemptville, Ontario, and that morning Ryan's class was learning about children in parts of Africa who walked for miles every day to collect dirty water that often made them sick. Ryan raised his hand and asked a simple question: "How much does it cost to help?" His teacher explained that a charity called WaterCan helped build wells and mentioned that a hand pump cost about seventy dollars. Ryan never forgot that number.
When he arrived home, he asked his mother for seventy dollars so he could build a well. Instead of simply giving him the money, she told him he would have to earn it himself. Ryan accepted the challenge without complaint. Over the next four months he vacuumed floors, washed windows, raked leaves, and completed every chore he could find. Every dollar went into a jar with one purpose: helping children he had never met.
When Ryan finally carried his seventy dollars into the WaterCan office, he believed he had enough. Instead, he learned that while seventy dollars could purchase a hand pump, an entire well would cost around two thousand dollars. For most people, especially a six-year-old, that would have been the end of the story. Ryan simply asked how he could raise the rest.
He returned home and kept working. His determination inspired everyone around him. His brothers stopped teasing him and began helping. Neighbors offered odd jobs. Teachers organized fundraisers, and local newspapers shared the story of the little boy who refused to give up because the price had changed. By the end of 1998, Ryan had raised the full two thousand dollars.
In January 1999, a well was completed at Angolo Primary School in northern Uganda. Ryan was only seven years old. Children who had once spent hours each day searching for water could now drink safely at school. Attendance improved, illness declined, and the entire community benefited from something that began with one child's determination.
Soon afterward, Ryan began receiving letters from students at the school, including a boy named Jimmy Akana. Although they had never met, the two boys became friends through their correspondence. In 2000, Ryan traveled to Uganda for the first time. As his vehicle approached the village, hundreds of people lined the road, cheering his name. They were not welcoming a celebrity or a politician. They were celebrating the little boy whose determination had transformed their lives.
Rather than ending with one successful project, Ryan's mission continued to grow. At just ten years old, his family helped establish Ryan's Well Foundation, an organization dedicated to providing clean water and sanitation to communities around the world. Over the years, the foundation has completed more than 1,700 water projects and over 1,300 sanitation projects across 17 countries, helping provide clean water to well over 1.5 million people.
Life brought one final, remarkable twist. Years after writing those first letters, Jimmy escaped violence in Uganda and eventually settled in Canada, where he was welcomed into Ryan's family. The two boys whose friendship began because of a single well eventually became brothers.
Ryan Hreljac's story began with an ordinary classroom lesson and one question that most adults would have forgotten by the end of the day: "How much does it cost?" His willingness to act on the answer transformed not only his own life but the lives of countless others, proving that extraordinary change can begin with a child who refuses to believe that helping someone else is someone else's responsibility.
