It began in the quiet town of Kemptville, Ontario, on an ordinary winter’s day in 1998 – a day that, to anyone else, looked like any other in the life of a six-year-old boy. But for Ryan Hreljac, that day would become the hinge on which the rest of his life swung.
Ryan was in his Grade One classroom when his teacher, Mrs Prest, talked about something most children never hear about so young: how millions of people around the world struggle daily for the most basic necessity of life – water. She described children in African villages walking for miles, burdened with heavy jerry cans of dirty water that made them sick and sometimes took their lives.
Ryan listened. And something stirred deep inside him. “How much does it cost to bring them water?” he asked. “About seventy dollars for a well,” the teacher replied.
To a six-year-old, seventy dollars might as well have been seven billion. But Ryan didn’t see a mountain; he saw a price tag on a problem.
That afternoon, he didn’t ask for a toy or sweets. He asked his mother, Susan for seventy dollars. “To buy a well,” he said simply. “They need clean water. They’re dying.”
Susan saw something in her son that she couldn’t ignore – an earnestness, a resolve. But she also saw a teachable moment. So she said, gently, “If you want seventy dollars, you’ll have to earn it.” And earn it he did.
Ryan vacuumed, washed windows, hauled firewood, cut grass – every small job earning him a dollar or two. His brothers thought he was mad. Seventy dollars? That would take forever. But Ryan didn’t blink. He just worked. And kept at it.
After four long months, Ryan had his seventy dollars. He marched – puffed with pride – into the offices of WaterCan, ready to build his well. The representative looked at the envelope, impressed. But then delivered the blow: “We’re impressed, Ryan – but a well costs $2,000.”
Most six-year-olds might have folded. Not Ryan. With the same calm determination he’d shown while doing chores, he said, “Okay. I’ll just do more chores.”
That moment is the heart of the story – not the dollars, not the wells, but the decision to keep going. Word got out in his neighbourhood. Neighbours offered work. Service clubs invited him to speak. Fundraisers were organized. Within a year, Ryan had raised the full $2,000.
In January 1999, at age seven, he sent the money. The first well was drilled at Angolo Primary School in Uganda. Clean water flowed where there had once only been thirst. And Ryan’s life was irrevocably changed. But the story doesn’t stop there.
During a visit to Uganda in 2000, Ryan met his first pen pal, Jimmy Akana, a boy who had walked for water just as Mrs Prest described. Their friendship deepened. Jimmy’s parents had disappeared during conflict, and he lived with an aunt, rising in the night to fetch water before school.
Later, after being abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army, Jimmy escaped and eventually came to Canada, being adopted into the Hreljac family and graduating alongside Ryan.
Ryan kept fundraising and educating. At age ten, his family helped him start the Ryan’s Well Foundation, a registered charity committed not just to building wells but to teaching about sanitation, hygiene, and human dignity. Over the years, the foundation’s reach expanded to 17 countries with more than 1,800 water and over 1,300 sanitation projects, bringing safe water to over 1.6 million people.
Ryan has shared his message around the world – on The Oprah Winfrey Show, on CNN, on stages from classrooms to conferences – reminding people that change doesn’t always start big, but it always starts somewhere.
He graduated from the University of King’s College in Halifax with a double major in International Development and Political Science, and today serves as the Foundation’s Executive Director, speaking passionately about equity, clean water, and how every person – no matter their age – can move the world.
If a six-year-old could pivot the world toward compassion, what might the rest of us do?