ICYMI: This Wichita group keeps free water flowing to neighbors in need

When the summer heat turns brutal, an all-volunteer group in Wichita makes sure free cold water is never far away. Maggie Gilmore and the Wichita Hydration Homies deliver bottles and stock coolers around the city — for the unsheltered, bus riders and anyone else who's thirsty.

FULL STORY: All-volunteer group tries to keep free water close at hand for anyone in Wichita

Here are key takeaways:

• Maggie Gilmore organizes Wichita Hydration Homies, a group formed three years ago to encourage neighbors to deliver or leave free water around the city. She makes water runs five days a week, even while working full time.

• The group communicates mainly through a Facebook page Gilmore created, which had 754 followers as of Aug. 28. The page urges people to set up hydration stations and stock them with ice and water bottles.

• Gilmore credits her friend Sarah Jane with starting Wichita's free-water movement about three years ago during an intense July and August heat wave, after Jane noticed people suffering on buses, in parks and in homes without cool water.

• On a recent stop at the former Central Library on Main Street, Gilmore brought cold bottles to two unsheltered people she's gotten to know. The woman said that on days Gilmore doesn't come, she gets water from the downtown YMCA, the Open Door shelter or a decorative fountain on the library grounds.

• "Everybody can be a Hydration Homie," Gilmore said — freeze some water, toss a cooler in your car and leave it where someone might need it.

The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The full story in the link at top was reported, written and edited entirely by journalists.