The Story

The Fresh Future Foundation was created by Ethan Chan and Saketh Bongu, just a couple of sophomores in high school. These kids though, saw true problems in the world, problems they felt compelled to fix.

​

In 2019, Ethan ventured on a trip to Vietnam to reconnect with his family and explore the culture. While he mostly stayed in the beautiful city of Saigon, his perspective shifted when he travelled to the countryside. There, he was warned that the water was unsafe to drink because of a high bacterial presence. Even after leaving Vietnam, the thought lingered in the back of his head, why was a necessity to life such as risk in many areas of the world.

​

During the summer of 2023, Saketh took a trip to India with his family to partake in an internship and visit his relatives. He partook in an internship, which had him stay in a tribal school where he got to teach students various subjects in a remote community. Prior to the internship, he was told in advance to bring a LifeStraw Water Bottle. This precaution was compulsory with the potential presence of different waterborne diseases in the water that would be unhealthy to outsiders. After Saketh parted from his internship, he was furnished with the desire to help with the water-related issues that took place in tribal parts of India.

​

These two kids met in high school, became friends, and shared this one question: How could the issue of water purity be fixed? Saketh researched the problem and found very few people attempting to make a difference in the parts of the world they had seen. Ethan became interested in devising a solution to this question and researched different methods for purifying water. They combined their ideas and decided to create the Fresh Future Foundation because it was something they truly cared about and wanted to see change in the world.