I Am Waters Foundation From the Runway to the Streets: Elena Davis gives Houston’s homeless a message in a bottle

002 Magazine Houston — In 2009, Davis founded I Am Waters, a nonprofit foundation that provides safe, transportable water to homeless individuals and shelters. During the summer of 2011, I Am Water delivered 300,000 bottles of water throughout Houston, Ft. Worth and Austin.

I Am Waters Foundations’ December Advertisement

Take a look at our December Ads running in this month’s copy of Paper City Magazine.

I Am Waters Foundation’s First Published Ad

I Am Waters Foundation is pleased to share our first published ad. Can be seen in the November issue of PaperCity magazine. More to follow.

I Am Waters Foundation Helps Houston’s Homeless | Houston Lifestyle Magazine

Area nonprofits provided 186,000 bottles of water to the homeless in the Bayou City thanks to a donation from the Houston-based I AM WATERS Foundation. Nearly one-third, or 68,000 bottles, went to Star of Hope for distribution to its women and children, mobile outreach and men’s programs as part of the homeless mission’s 10-week Summer of Hope program.

I Am Waters Foundation Helps Hydrate The Homeless | Houston, Texas | NBC KPRC Houston

HOUSTON, TEXAS — A unique Houston-based foundation is serving a need few realize exists in the city: fresh, clean drinking water for the homeless population. “If you don’t have water, you die,” said Elena Davis, founder of I Am Waters. “It’s imperative that you have water. You can survive longer without food than you can water.” Davis founded the organization three years ago and began distributing bottles of water to 15 homeless shelters in Houston, Austin and Fort Worth. Last year, the foundation distributed 80,000 bottles. This year the foundation will distribute 300,000 bottles. The foundation delivers the water during the 16 hottest weeks of the summer.

Former Model Uses Photography and Water to Help America’s Homeless | Houston, Texas | 11 KHOU Eyewitness News

HOUSTON, TEXAS — A former model is using the images of local veterans to help fight poverty and homelessness.

Elena Davis’ face has graced the cover and pages of some of the world’s top fashion magazines but now she’s behind the lens and the woman behind I Am Waters.

The Houston-based organization delivers bottled water to homeless people across America.

No Respite From Heat For Austin’s Homeless | Austin, Texas | Statesman

AUSTIN, TEXAS — Joe Steve sprawls across a makeshift bed in the woods, motionless and sweating in the midday heat. It’s 100 degrees, and the 24-year-old homeless man is trying to rest in a shady of a patch of woods off Barton Springs Road. His cheeks are flushed, his nose sunburned. He has no water, no fresh clothes and no desire move right now. “I walk around and sweat most of the time,” Steve said. “It’s way too hot to live out here.”

I Am Waters Foundation Spends July 4 Honoring Homeless Vets | Houston, Texas | ABC 13

HOUSTON (KTRK) — Life is not easy for servicemen and women when they return home after months, even years of war.
Fortunately, there are many organizations to help them. Now one group is using something as simple as a bottle of water to inspire our vets.
The government estimates more than 100,000 veterans are homeless. They live on the streets or in transitional housing, and while many of us take it for granted, they don’t have easy access to the most basic necessity–water.

Homeless Shelters Feeling The Heat Of A Hot Summer | I Am Waters Donates 37,000 Bottles Of Water | Fort Worth, Texas | Star Telegram

FORT WORTH — People gathered on the scalding hot sidewalk around the Presbyterian Night Shelter have a keen interest in the thermostat.
“Can you please call time and temperature?” asked Claire Griffin, 41, spotting someone with a cellphone from under a blue umbrella that shielded her fair skin from the sun. “We get to go in if it hits 100.”
It’s actually the heat index that has to hit triple digits before the shelter opens its doors early. Inside, employees were hurriedly preparing for another rush of homeless people escaping what is already a sizzling summer, even by Texas standards.
The heat is already straining some shelter and relief agencies’ budgets and supplies. The night shelter’s electric bill is approaching $13,000 a month for all its campuses — an amount typically seen in August.

Water For The Homeless | I Am Waters Foundation | American-Statesman

AUSTIN, TEXAS – Some 80,000 bottles of water have arrived in Austin for the homeless courtesy of a donation from the organizationI Am Waters Foundation. Two Austin non-profits, Front Steps, which manages the Men’s emergency shelter at the ARCH and Mobile Loaves and Fishes, will distribute the water to those in need in the coming hot months.