Happy 10th anniversary, Key Club!

In 2008, I started the Thirst Project with a mission to end the global water crisis. I believed that young people simply weren’t being given practical ways to take action against this humanitarian crisis, but if they were given that platform, amazing things would happen. 

Over these past 18 years, we’ve been fortunate to partner with other organizations to further this mission, from celebrity supporters and corporate sponsorships to branded campaigns and service projects. Of all these partnerships, none has been more impactful than our partnership with Key Club International. With over US$1.2 million raised by Key Clubs around the world to fund water projects, no other group has done more to further our mission than you, and I can’t be more grateful for that. 

Our partnership with Key Club International became official at the 2016 Key Club International Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., but our collaboration goes all the way back to March 2014’s “Dirty Little Secret” campaign. In 2017, we launched our first “Thirsty 30” campaign with Cameron Boyce. Over the past few years, our annual campaign has been Key Club Walks, challenging clubs to host replications of the 3.75-mile average daily journey that millions of people undertake to fetch dirty water. Through Key Club Walks 2025, we funded an entire water project for a high school in Eswatini!

As much as I love the international side of Key Club, I also love seeing districts, divisions and individual Key Clubs working together with their schools and communities to fund water projects. Since the 2017-18 school year, I’ve seen seven districts, five regions/divisions, and 20 Key Clubs fund at least one full water project for a community in need, most of those having done it multiple times over. You are truly incredible! 

Thirst Project started as a group of teenagers on Hollywood Boulevard raising awareness about the global water crisis. Sharing with people that (at the time) 1.1 billion people on this planet were walking every day to fetch contaminated water from ponds, rivers, swamps, earthen dams and so on. Telling people that this daily journey for water was not only causing sickness and death but also keeping children out of school and keeping women from finding gainful employment. Today, the United Nations believes 785 million people lack access to clean water, a resource that we can’t help but take for granted every single day. 

Many of you know our focus over the past decade and a half has been the Kingdom of Eswatini. We will be the generation to end the water crisis globally, but the first step toward that mission is ending the water crisis in Eswatini. We believe we are now within five years of bringing the number of communities in Eswatini without access to safe, clean water to ZERO. For those of you who have taken action in some way to help us build water projects, I can’t thank you enough, and I’m so excited to celebrate this milestone with you. But I hope we all can recognize that there is still a long way to go. For those of you who haven’t yet experienced the magic of Thirst Project, we can’t wait to see you host a free Thirst Project speaker, participate in Key Club Walks 2026 or even start your journey toward funding a water project.

There’s a reason Thirst Project and Key Club go so well together! We are two organizations built on the fact that young people are the most powerful agents for social change. Thirst Project is proving that you don’t need more experience, money, connections, a degree or anything else to truly change the world, and we couldn’t do it without Key Club. Thank you again, and happy 10th anniversary, Key Club! 

Seth Maxwell, founder and CEO, Thirst Project