Valley boy makes large water donation as part of bar mitzvah project
Jun 1, 2015, 8:40 PM | Updated: Jun 2, 2015, 6:21 am
PHOENIX — Just as the temperatures are heating up, the Valley’s homeless are getting big help with the largest donation of water that one person has ever donated to Central Arizona Shelter Services.
That person was a 13-year-old boy who delivered 3,000 gallons of water on Monday.
Ethan Cohen just finished the seventh grade at Paradise Jewish Day School in Scottsdale. A past experience there gave him an idea for his service project for his bar mitzvah.
“Every year our school collects box tops and donates it to a different charity,” said Cohen. “In fourth grade, it was donated to charity water, and that gave me the idea to do a bottled water drive (this year).”
He spend the next five months calling and writing businesses to get them to donate water to Central Arizona Shelter Services in Phoenix. Then, he got a surprise.
“We had an anonymous donor who said that if I could get 1,000 gallons (of water), he would donate another 1,000,” he said.
On Monday, Ethan showed up at the shelter with 18,000 bottles of water. That amounts to about 3,000 gallons.
Shelter officials told Ethan that they were grateful for his contribution. “They said that this is the largest donation that a single person has ever given,” Cohen said.
The water will be distributed to homeless people in Phoenix and those staying in the shelter.
