Next month, hundreds of restaurants across the country will ask their patrons to pay for their tap water to quench the thirst of people they have likely never met.

That’s because March 21 marks the beginning of World Water Week and the start of the fourth annual UNICEF Tap Project. Launched in 2007, the Tap Project has restaurants ask their customers to donate $1 or more for the tap water they usually enjoy free of charge. All donations help UNICEF bring clean, accessible water to the nearly 450 million children worldwide who lack access to safe water.

The Tap Project is the brainchild of advertising creative director David Droga. Since its New York City kickoff four years ago, the project has spread to almost all 50 states and raised $1.5 million, according to tapproject.org.

The initiative focuses on restaurants because of their readymade ability to make a significant impact, says Richard Alleyne with the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

“We like the idea of the restaurant involvement because it’s so turnkey and the dining community has really picked up on it in the last two years,” Alleyne says.

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In the aftermath of the massive earthquake that rocked Haiti on January 12, the restaurant industry has responded with various fundraising initiatives to help the devastated Caribbean island nation.

The destruction was “unimaginable,” in the words of Haitian President René Préval, whose presidential palace lay in ruins after an early-morning earthquake that may have killed as many as 200,000 people. The earthquake razed large sections of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, burying countless bodies in the wreckage of collapsed buildings.

As the images of devastation flooded television sets across the globe, U.S. restaurants large and small sprang to action. Two days after the earthquake, McDonald’s announced a $500,000 donation to be matched by Arcos Dorados, the company that operates nearly 1,700 McDonald’s locations in Latin America.

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More rain fell on Chicago on September 13th, 2008 than on any other day in more than 130 years. That evening in Oak Park, some 170 architecture lovers braved the historic downpour for a gala at Unity Temple, one of 25 Frank Lloyd Wright structures in the near Western suburb.

In semi-formal attire, the attendees drank, ate and mingled with fellow contributors to the building’s restoration fund, the men eventually removing their jackets in the rain-steamed, unventilated interior. Later, all enjoyed the music of Chicago trumpeter Orbert Davis in the temple sanctuary, a bright, intricately designed space that Wright called his “little jewel box.”

The gala, an annual event held by the Unity Temple Restoration Foundation, was a small pocket of calm amid the storm raging outside. And it was a success. A silent auction brought in $7,000, a pittance compared to the estimated $15-million sum needed to restore the aging building. But, still, good for one night.

Furthermore, the Temple, which had had its roof repaired in 2001, appeared to have weathered the storm. A few leaks notwithstanding, things could have been worse. In nearby Plano, Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House was under two feet of water after the Fox River jumped its banks. Third flood in 12 years. Donations needed urgently. The crisis had kept Farnsworth’s caretakers from attending the gala.

Yes, things could have been worse. And then the ceiling caved.

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With much of the world focused on economic indicators, Juárez, Mexico, is experiencing trends of a grislier sort: Decapitations, arson, and homicide are all part of daily life in one of the world’s most dangerous cities.

Juárez’s drug war, which has claimed more than 1,000 lives in 2009, has ravaged the restaurant industry and sent franchises north into El Paso, Texas, to escape violence and extortion.

“There’s crazy people burning restaurants over there and they try to get money from the restaurants and bars,” says Antonio Rodriguez, general manager of one of the two Barrigas Restaurant locations in El Paso. Arson is a common punishment in Juárez if a restaurant refuses protection from drug cartels. As a result, Rodriguez sold his house and moved his family to El Paso in search of security.

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The recession has hurt all summer camps this year, but special-needs camps-—those serving children with cancer, diabetes and other diseases-—are especially feeling the pinch.

Perhaps the biggest hit has come from corporations, whose donations typically anchor these camps’ budgets. But this year many companies have shrunk their contributions or eliminated them entirely as hard times have constrained corporate generosity.

Chicago-based Children’s Oncology Services Inc., which runs the One Step At A Time camp for cancer and leukemia patients on Lake Geneva, in Williams Bay, Wis., has seen a 20 percent to 25 percent reduction in all donations, according to Executive Director Jacob Drescher.

Children’s Oncology Services drew on its cash reserves to make up for this year’s losses and cut costs wherever possible, for example, by limiting off-site travel.

“You just have to be creative with what you have and make it stretch a little more,” Drescher said.

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With the 90th annual National Restaurant Association (NRA) Show in Chicago heading in to its third day, many attendees are disappointed with low turnout compared with past years.

The four-day event, which attracted an estimated 71,500 attendees and more than 2,200 exhibitors in 2008, has seen a significant slimming this year, as the recession has hit one of the largest restaurant-industry gatherings in the world.

"They're holding their own, but, like everything else, [the NRA Show has] been affected" by the economy, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley said Saturday on the convention floor in McCormick Place. "This is a tsunami."

The NRA could not estimate attendance before the show ends on Tuesday because of a surge in late registrants, but Greg Kirrish, vice president of sales and marketing for the association, said attendance numbers would "undoubtedly" fall short of last year's figures.

A Coca-Cola spokesman estimated a drop off of 15 to 20 percent from 2008.

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