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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In the latest sign of a possible wage-dispute trend in the restaurant industry, five Houston-based restaurants agreed to fork over more than $334,000 in back pay to 154 current and former employees after the Department of Labor found minimum-wage and overtime violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

The Department’s Wage and Hour Division discovered that non-exempt employees, entitled to “time-and-a-half” pay for overtime under the FLSA, “were being paid straight time for all hours worked, including those worked over 40 in a workweek,” according to a press release issued Friday. “Additionally, the companies did not maintain the required recordkeeping.”

“It is a top priority of this department to ensure that all workers receive the wages they have earned,” said Cynthia Watson, regional administrator for the Wage and Hour Division in the Southwest, in the release. “In these cases, employees were found to be earning hourly rates that fell below the federal minimum wage. This is illegal.”

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One year since the economic collapse brought restaurant growth to a standstill, some quick serves have started to see signs of recovery.

The burst of the housing bubble last September, which sent the world economy crashing, made expansion nearly impossible. Businesses stopped investing and banks stopped lending. The fallout at Sandella’s Flatbread Café was typical.

“The pipeline didn’t just stop getting filled,” says CEO Mike Stimola. “The whole thing basically flew apart.”

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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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Consumers were more confident about the U.S. economy in May, according to the New York-based Conference Board, which said its closely watched index of consumer confidence climbed more than 14 points to 54.9 from a revised 40.8 in April.

The jump in consumer confidence reported Tuesday far exceeded analysts’ expectations for a reading of 42.6 in May, according to Bloomberg LP, and puts the index at its highest level in eight months.Read more