--- title: Kenna: Climbing for Clean Water | TIME description: Grammy nominated musician Kenna wanted to help his father fund clean wells in Ethiopia. After summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro with friends like Jessica Biel and Lupe Fiasco, Kenna talks to TIME about the fight for clean water. canonical: https://time.com/video/d7g50jj3/ og:title: Kenna: Climbing for Clean Water og:description: Grammy nominated musician Kenna wanted to help his father fund clean wells in Ethiopia. After summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro with friends like Jessica Biel and Lupe Fiasco, Kenna talks to TIME about the fight for clean water. og:url: https://time.com/video/d7g50jj3/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/d7g50jj3/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Kenna: Climbing for Clean Water twitter:description: Grammy nominated musician Kenna wanted to help his father fund clean wells in Ethiopia. After summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro with friends like Jessica Biel and Lupe Fiasco, Kenna talks to TIME about the fight for clean water. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/d7g50jj3/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Kenna: Climbing for Clean Water > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Kenna: Climbing for Clean Water [Watch (HLS stream): Kenna: Climbing for Clean Water](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/d7g50jj3.m3u8) (4:57)  _Published 2010-03-24. Grammy nominated musician Kenna wanted to help his father fund clean wells in Ethiopia. After summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro with friends like Jessica Biel and Lupe Fiasco, Kenna talks to TIME about the fight for clean water._ --- Jul 27, 2023 1:21 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Here Are the Nominations for the 2019 Grammy Awards](/video/j3mzL10P/) ### Here Are the Nominations for the 2019 Grammy Awards [How to Clean Your Appliances on a Budget](/video/TZCKdI97/) ### How to Clean Your Appliances on a Budget [TIME 100: Clean Water for Struggling Haiti](/video/6JdinheT/) ### TIME 100: Clean Water for Struggling Haiti --- ## Transcript >> I'm Claire Suddath for Time. com. And I'm here with Kenna, Grammy- nominated musician and founder of Summon on the Summit: A Benefit Climb to the Top of Mount Kilimanjaro to Bring Awareness for the World's Clean Water Crisis. >> I'll be thankful if I get to the top, but I'm not underestimating what's ahead of us. >> How did the idea come about? >> About three years ago, my dad told me that he'd saved $ 10, 000 to dig a well in Ethiopia and I was born in Ethiopia. My dad said that and I didn't understand why. So I asked him and he shocked me to tell me that as a child he had water- born diseases and that he suffered with it for about ten years that he lost his brother, lost friends, best friends and neighbors and, you know, it felt like-- I felt like a bad kid 'cause I didn't know about this. But even more so, I wanted to understand why this could happen or how this could have happened in my family. It really impacted me the fact that a billion people don't have clean water; the fact that 50 % of the reason why people go to hospitals worldwide is because of the lack of clean water and water- borne illnesses. You know, every 15 seconds a child dies, which can be prevented. Actually, we have the solutions. It's not even like something where we have to do research or figure it out. So, I wanted to do something. I climbed Kilimanjaro about 5 years ago and I didn't get to the top, so I had a vendetta against the mountain. It's elemental at this point. I don't know how well people are gonna be able to pull it off considering they've never done it before. The last time I was here, that's what happened to me. It wasn't that I was like sick, but I could have been more focused and just allowed myself to be sick until I got there, so I've charged my brain this time if I vomit or if I trip or if I, you know, have frozen toes and feet when I come off and I have to get them amputated, I'm going. >> And how did you convinced people to climb with you? >> It wasn't twisting arms. I said, " I'm gonna go climb Kilimanjaro. I'm gonna do it for clean water ." It wasn't such a big idea at first. It was me going on a climb and hopefully raising some money and helping my dad dig more wells. First person I mentioned it to was Justin Timberlake. It wasn't two seconds after it came out of my mouth, it was like, " I'm going with you ." Quickly after that, Jess and I talked and she wanted to go as well and then Lupe and I in the studio talked about it-- Lupe Fiasco. And they signed on and it was off to the races. >> My muscles go really tight. I was little nauseous on the way up that last in climb. The mountain was like, " Whoosh ," pulley- pull way. And don't disrespect me. >> It sort of a hodgepodge team of people who, I guess, heard about it and-- >> Yeah. >> Who wanted to come. >> It's even more than that. It was even more than a hodgepodge. It was designed 'cause I had so many people who wanted to go, so many amazing celebrity- types, music people. I wanted a kid in Nebraska or a kid in Paris to see somebody on the climb that represented them. >> What I think it makes this a challenging climb and expedition especially for people who don't climb is that the rate of ascent, we're going from 10, 000 to 19, 000 feet and a period of 4 or 5 days is pretty extreme. >> What was the hardest part of the climb? >> The hardest part of it was mental. It was the ability to allow yourself to be completely uncomfortable. >> Lupe, how do you feel? >> Everybody has a different set of variables that affect them on the climb, whether it will be what they wear, what they eat, you know, when they go to the bathroom, you know, how much they drink. It's just those things that accumulate, which equal up to you either feeling great or suffering, you know. There's 80 % chance that you're gonna be uncomfortable, you know, so you kinda got it rewired everything into being comfortable with being uncomfortable. >> One of the things as we're building summit on the summit, the way that I approached building summit on this summit. It was a lot like how I approached building albums. When it comes to music, you really have no opportunity just to do everything and you can do it all yourself, but it's always better when you have people around you that are better than you or smarter than you. The reality is for summit that if I was considering summit on this summit in an album, everyone of the elements in people that are in the climb that are a part of the climb are different portion of this album and an album should always be a journey and I felt like some [ unk ] 'cause I'm always exactly that. It was a journey for everyone to learn from and I believed that summit is like a soundtrack to their lives. It's something that they will always call back up on to remind themselves of what things are important to them. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Kenna: Climbing for Clean Water","description":"Grammy nominated musician Kenna wanted to help his father fund clean wells in Ethiopia. After summiting Mt. 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