Mr. Greg Sanz

In the case of Greg Sanz, a graduate of The Lawrenceville School who is now a student at Georgetown University, a small miracle was worked: He helped bring clean drinking water to a once-parched Muslim village in Algeria.Mr. Sanz took the villagers' plight to heart after learning of them from Algerian immigrant Lakhdar "Ben" Benamara, his hairstylist at Another Angle on Nassau Street.
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Mr. Sanz said he first became aware of the hardship facing the villagers nearly two years ago while still a student at The Lawrenceville School.Not only was he a regular customer of Mr. Benamara's at the time, but after going to him for haircuts since his freshman year at the prep school, Mr. Sanz said he also had become his friend."I developed a friendship with Ben as everyone does with their haircutter," he explained.
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So Mr. Sanz consulted with his father, an international oil consultant, picking his brain about the possibility of reaching out to an oil-field drilling company that might be willing to lend a hand , and a drill rig.The university student said he needed a firm that was on the ground in the country, and one that was using the sort of equipment he had in mind for the villagers in Tazrout.His father's answer?Get in touch with the people at Sonatrach, Algeria's state-owned oil company."If anything was going to happen, it was going to happen through them," he said.
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At the time Mr. Sanz wrote him in February 2003, asking him to use his influence to help bring fresh water to the village, he was president and director general of Sonatrach, which has longstanding relationships with oilfield service companies like Halliburton and Schlumberger.To show he meant business, Mr. Sanz also sent copies of his letter to several influential Americans.His father had taught him that the gentle application of pressure can sometimes yield remarkable results.It took some time, and several stops and restarts, before the new water source was drilled."This all took about a year and a half, almost two years," the university student continued."It was a very slow process."But at long last, the well finally started pumping this past summer, and Mr. Sanz and Mr. Benamara, his hair cutter and friend, visited Tazrout to witness the results.
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"If you saw the reception they gave for Greg, you wouldn't believe it.He was a prince there for what he did for them."But there's work yet to be done.While the well has been drilled, infrastructure is needed to bring the water to the main reservoirs of the village.Villagers must make due by bringing the water back home from the well themselves.And as for Mr. Sanz, he indicated he plans to apply a little more of that gentle pressure he learned so well from his father on officials in Algeria to get the job finished."I plan to keep the pressure on," he said.

Greg Sanz '03 Turns Chance Conversations into Crusade Imagine casual conversations between a hairdresser and a long-time client that spark a humanitarian effort thousands of miles away in an Algerian village?Even though this sounds a little far-fetched, it's exactly what occurred between alumnus Greg Sanz '03 and his Princeton hairdresser, Lakhdar "Ben" Benamara, who is also an Algerian immigrant.

In a recent article for The Princeton Packet, Greg recounts the conversations in which he learned about the lack of clean drinking water in Ben's hometown of Tazrout.Although some water was available for bathing and washing, the well that supplied drinking water to the entire community had run dry.Greg felt compelled to help out in some way, and he quickly determined that the easiest solution would be to drill a new well.However, acquiring the necessary machinery and laborers to undertake such a project would prove much more challenging.

Luckily, Greg's father, an international oil consultant, provided his son with sound advice and encouraged him to contact Sonatrach, Algeria's state-owned oil company.Through polite, yet persistent, letter-writing to Sonatrach and influential American leaders, Greg spurred a nearly two-year process that eventually brought clean drinking water to the villagers of Tazrout this past summer.Even though Greg maintains that more can still be accomplished, like connecting the new well to the main reservoirs of the village, his efforts have not gone unnoticed by the Tazrout villagers, who treated him like royalty during a recent visit.

A current student at Georgetown University, Greg played soccer and was affiliated with Hamill House as a Lawrenceville day student.