When Rachel Goheen, Class of 2010, visited Haiti, the extreme poverty she saw left her shaken. But she wasn't content to simply feel concern. Back on campus, she brainstormed with classmates Stephanie Caton and Nora Erickson. What can a few people, living amid American privileges, do to address the suffering rampant in developing countries?

That conversation led the three to a fundamental, pressing problem—clean drinking water—and to the Lifestraw project of the Interchurch Medical Association (IMA). The Lifestraw is a portable water filter, and the IMA sends these ingenious devices to the Democratic Republic of Congo. There, infected water causes diarrheal illnesses that kill approximately 28,000 people a year. Each Lifestraw, carried easily around the neck on a string, can filter 185 gallons of water, enough to last a Congolese family for most of a year.

So a small, Kenyon-based charitable enterprise was born: selling water bottles to raise money for life-saving Lifestraws. Rachel contacted the IMA. Stephanie arranged for seed money. Nora created a clever logo, H2OPE. The project was adopted by Kenyon Student-Athletes, a campus group. (Stephanie plays softball, Rachel and Nora play soccer.) And the Lifestraw table became a fixture at athletic contests.

The three student-athlete-philanthropists hope to keep the project going as long as they're at Kenyon, then maybe pass it along to other students. "We all just felt like we wanted to do something to help," says Goheen. "We realized how easy it is to make a difference."