For competitive eaters, water is a game changer -- for 1 billion people in the world, water is a life changer.

On July 4, I will be competing at a Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, NY, hoping to set a new personal record -- 30 hot dogs in 10 minutes!

30 hot dogs is a huge number for me, 5 better than my current record, which counts as a whole plate at the competition table.

Even if they have never seen one of these contests, Americans tend to know two things about the Nathan's challenge:

(1) The infamous Kobayashi's ability to eat over 50 HDBs (for some reason, less people know about Joey Chestnut's record of 68).

(2) The technique of dunking the buns in water to make them go down easier.

If you take water out of the equation, these superhuman levels of consumption would not be possible. Who knows how many Chestnut would be able to eat without dunking the buns or washing down his bites. I, for one, probably would have choked to death on my first bite of contest hot dog in 2011. (True story for another time).

But for a billion people in the world, water IS out of the equation. Every week, millions of women and their children walk more than 14 miles just to get water for their families. Most of this water is contaminated, and causes life threatening diseases, but it's all they have.

For these communities, a clean water well means healthier lives and less time and effort needed to gather water for their families. Both of those give them more time to grow food, work, and start businesses -- leading to reduced rates of poverty and hunger.

This year's goal is to raise $1080. That's enough to help 54 people get clean water -- one for every hot dog I ate at the Vegas Qualifier (24) and one for every hot dog I plan to eat at Coney Island.

With this goal, I’ll be there in practice and at the game table knowing that every hot dog means one less person will be at risk of death caused by waterborne illness. It’s one more child who can stay in school instead of dropping out to spend her days walking 10 miles to fetch water for her family. If that isn’t incentive to eat 5 more dogs, I don’t know what is.

Please join me in this effort by making a donation. Every $20 will help one person get clean water, and every dollar helps reach this goal.

Let’s make a difference.
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Because of charity: water's unique model, 100% of all donations go directly to water projects, and each donation is "proved" when projects are complete.