Nightclub Promoter Turns Humanitarian

A story about how Scott Harrison transformed his life from a NYC nightclub promoter to volunteering on a hospital ship in the world's poorest country.

"I was a nightclub promoter in New York City for 10 years. At 28, half my body went numb. I went to doctors, had MRIs and CT scans, they couldn't figure out anything wrong with me, but it was a wake-up call. If I died, my tombstone would only read 'Here lies a man who's gotten a million people wasted.'

I wondered whether I could start life over and asked myself what would the opposite of my life look like. I decided volunteering on a humanitarian mission in the poorest country would be the opposite of my bottles-and-models lifestyle.

I started applying to humanitarian aid organizations - Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, Oxfam, World Vision, the Red Cross. I was denied by the first 10 organizations. Then one organization wrote back and said if I was willing to pay them $500 a month to volunteer and go live in Liberia - the poorest country in the world that had just come out of a 14-year civil war - they would take me.

I signed up as a photojournalist on their hospital ship. It was a 500-foot converted ocean liner that had been turned into a state-of-the-art hospital. The idea was simple: sail a giant hospital ship with the best doctors in the world on their vacation time to people who can't afford medical care.

That experience changed everything. I went from selling $10 bottles of Voss water in nightclubs to seeing people drink from swamps and ponds. I learned half the country was drinking dirty water and half the disease was because of it. That's when I decided to dedicate my life to bringing clean water to everyone in the world."