Access2CW
In 2017, Nursing student Hasan Syed founded Access 2 Clean Water, raising about $21,000 for a campaign to bring clean water to Indigenous people. Syed’s mission was to run from Vancouver to Ottawa, where he trekked more than 5203.26 km in 193 days. Syed, an immigrant to Canada from Pakistan, is the founder of Access 2 Clean Water, a campaign he started in April 2017 to raise awareness and money to help address the clean drinking water crisis affecting the Indigenous populations. While at a community dinner in September 2015 in Thunder Bay where the topic of Canada’s water crisis came up. This prompted Syed to recall his parents running between the kitchen and water cooler in their living when he was five or six living in Pakistan. He said they would boil water and strain it through a cheesecloth into the water cooler. Initially, Syed had wanted to organize a conference dinner to raise awareness, but he felt like as a national issue, a local dinner would not do the issue justice. Syed remembered learning about Canadian icon Terry Fox when he was 10 years old and newly arrived in Canada. Fox had cancer and planned to run across the country to raise funds for cancer research. Months after the dinner, Syed knew what he wanted to do. The idea to travel across the country to raise awareness about the crisis came to Syed in January 2016, and he hit the road in April of 2017, running more than 5203.26 km in 193 days.