“Shakira Niazi is grateful for the life she has lived.
Having escaped Afghanistan as a preteen, Niazi, now 40, has since lived the American dream. She received an MBA, drove a Maserati, earned an average of $250,000 a year in the mortgage banking industry, and both her children attend private high school De La Salle in Concord.
Then, last March, during World Water Day, she stumbled upon a report released by UNICEF about access to clean drinking water that changed the course of her professional life. In the report, she spotted a map with a little pink dot.
“That is my country of Afghanistan, and that color means that more than 52 percent of its entire population doesn’t have access to clean water,” she said. “Up until last year, I really had no idea. I knew this was an issue, but not to the level that I had just found out.”
Niazi remembers her father subsequently planted the seed by telling her she had to figure out how to build water wells for those in need.”
Read More: Business of bringing clean water to world via David Morill – Contra Costa Times
Note* Salvare La Vita waiter will be exhibiting at the San Francisco Green Festival April 9-10 at the SF Concourse