TULSA, Okla. — The Oklahoma Toffee Company, a Tulsa-based business, plans to bring 10,000 bottles of water to Jackson, Mississippi as 150,000 people living there don’t have access to safe drinking water.
“Jackson, Mississippi is one of those places that has really shown us a lot of love and has embraced us with open arms,” said Anthony Archie.
Archie is the owner of Oklahoma Toffee Company. He says they were at a trade show in Jackson this spring and met with dozens of people in the community.
“When I discovered that Jackson was going through tough times with this water crisis and that 150,000 residents were without reliable clean and safe drinking water, it was devastating,” Archie said.
The massive crisis in the largest city in Mississippi stems from flooding that caused the water infrastructure to fail. For more than a week, people who live in Jackson haven’t had clean drinking water.
“It was tough to know or to imagine that folks that I had shaken hands with just a few months earlier were struggling to find clean and safe drinking water."
While the company’s mission is to help teachers here in Oklahoma, they’re extending their service more than 500 miles away when they head back to a trade show next week.
“My heart was saying we just don’t have to take toffee,” said Archie. “We need to take water with us. That’s what motivated this entire campaign for us to unite together as a city and see how many bottles of water can we take with us to our friends in Jackson.”
The plan is to pack a U-Haul with 10,000 bottles of water worth $1,500. So far they’ve raised more than $600 on their GoFundMe. Archie’s late grandmother is from Jackson, and he says she instilled in him the important lesson of helping others.
“I think that we as a city have the opportunity to unite together, and to help our neighbors whether it’s across the street or across the country so it’s personal to me,” Archie said.
They’ll donate the water to Fondren Church in Jackson. You can donate until Wednesday, Sept. 14. Archie will buy the water on Wednesday, and they’ll leave for Jackson on Thursday, Sept. 15.
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