When Jacob ?Jac? Shacter was a child, living the good life in Jacksonville, he was stunned to hear a radio report that children in some African countries have to walk miles, possibly barefoot, to get water.
Dirty water at that.
?I remember hearing they had to a take a bucket and walk several miles to a river,? he said. ?Getting fresh water to people should be easy.?
So at age 12, when Jac got the chance to annually give $2,500 from his family?s foundation to a charity of his choice, he selected MIMA Uganda, a Jacksonville Beach-based nonprofit that funds water projects, schools and churches in Uganda. MIMA is derived from the Spanish word mimar, which means ?to care for.?
He continued the MIMA donations every year since and, now 17, will soon get to see the 10 rainwater-collection tanks his donations financed. On Monday,he will be part of a MIMA contingent headed to Uganda for a 10-day trip, loaded down with supplies such as a solar-charging panel, hand-cranked lights and lots of shoes for the children.
?I?m excited, a little scared,? he said.
Each of the 10 tanks labeled ?Jacob?s Well? are well known in their communities. So when Shacter arrives, he will be greeted as a celebrity, said Norberto Benitez, the Jacksonville Beach pediatrician who founded MIMA Uganda.
?When he gets there, he will be like Elvis,? he said with a laugh.
Shacter said he was a little uncomfortable with such accolades. After all, the money came from his parents, David and Melody Shacter, who formed a family foundation after selling their successful homebuilding business, Harmony Homes Inc. They wanted to ?give back? to the community and have their two sons get in the habit of doing the same, Melody Shacter said.
They were connected with Benitez through David Shacter?s fellow members of the Arlington Rotary Club.
?I don?t feel as responsible as people think I am,? said Jac, who just graduated from Douglas Anderson School of the Arts and heads to Jacksonville University in the fall. ?I just pointed it [the money] in a direction.?
But Benitez was impressed nonetheless. He still remembers finding out that ?this kid, 12 years old? saw the needs he was trying to meet in far-off Uganda.
Benitez founded MIMA as an offshoot of the Jupiter-based MIMA Foundation, which was established in 1996 to provide health care for the poor in Central and South America. He was one of numerous Florida doctors who donated their services.
In 2005, he shifted his mission to Africa, focusing on villages named Kayenje and Nnkoknjeru, which are about five hours apart. Benitez and supporters held fundraisers and donated money to build and renovate schools and churches, provide rainwater-collection tanks to harvest clean water off newly constructed roofs, provide a hot lunch for schoolchildren, wire schools for electricity and provide microloans to families to start or improve small businesses, according to the nonprofit?s website.
The goals are to create jobs by hiring local people to do the work and to improve Ugandans? quality of life, according to the website.
Water projects such as Jacob?s Wells are particularly critical in Uganda, which gets rain for three months, then none for the next three months and so on, Benitez said.
beth.cravey@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4109
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