Editor’s Note: Fascinating nuggets lie in the pages of Golfweek writers’ notebooks. As 2014 draws to a close, our Untold Stories series reveals the best anecdotes from this year that you haven’t yet read. The series runs from Dec. 15-22.

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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Betsy King wants to talk to you about water.

Meet Violet, a Zambian child who walks two miles to fetch drinking water for her family three times a day. Like many Zambian children, Violet often misses school because of the time it takes to collect water, but she still dreams of becoming a doctor.

Every day, King will tell you, more than 1,600 children age 5 or younger die from diarrhea caused by unsafe drinking water. That’s more deaths than AIDS and malaria combined, according to World Vision.

It’s inspiring to watch a decorated athlete in retirement take her world-class drive and discipline and thrust it toward a new passion. Africa is that passion for King. She first visited in 2006 and returned forever changed.

“I think God calls us to be involved in something bigger than yourself,” said King, who founded Golf Fore Africa in 2007.

King’s foundation has teamed with World Vision to help reach a new person with clean drinking water every 30 seconds. While King does have charity efforts in the U.S., she finds the need overseas too great to ignore.

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King texted one afternoon last January to say she had been released from the hospital. Moments later she was in her living room, answering questions and having her picture taken. Never mind that she’d just had knee-replacement surgery and hadn’t had a chance to brush her hair or change her clothes before we arrived.

King wanted to talk about Africa, and it didn’t matter how tired or sore she felt.

It wasn’t long ago that King, 59, whose 34 LPGA victories include six major championships, downsized from a 5,200-square-foot home to one that’s 2,800. For King, Africa is a constant reminder of excess.

In Lesotho, King’s foundation partnered with World Vision and Habitat for Humanity to fund 45 houses. Each cost $13,000 to build. Families, many of them child-headed, had their homes upgraded from thatched-roof huts with a dirt floor and no bathroom.

Pit latrines became a new luxury.

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King dreams of raising $100 million to fund projects in Africa. So far Golf Fore Africa has raised nearly $3 million, and the light in her eyes says she’s just getting started.

On King’s first trip to Africa she met up with a group of World Vision volunteers who call on people with AIDS and give them baths, take them to get medicine and help get their families tested.

On that particular trip they went into the home of a woman whose husband had died from AIDS. She had five kids and believed three of them might be HIV positive but hadn’t had them tested.

When they arrived, the frail woman was cooking one egg for the family.

“That was pretty unbelievable,” King said in a quiet voice.

The next year King returned to that same place and discovered that the woman was now one of the volunteer caregivers. None of her kids, it turned out, was HIV positive.

“She got some help,” King said, “and now she’s helping others. That’s really what you’re trying to do is enable the community to help one another.”

Golf Fore Africa also raised money to open a health clinic in Rwanda in April 2010 that serves more than 20,000. The group added classrooms and sleeping quarters to a school in Zambia and has helped ship thousands of backpacks to children stuffed with necessities such as soap, blankets, washclothes, pencils, pens and notebooks.

Volunteers collected $22 donations for each backpack and then set up shop at a local high school where volunteers assembled. Promise Packs become an annual project for the foundation.

Katherine Kirk first met King at LPGA Fellowship during Kirk’s rookie season.

“I noticed the difference in Betsy when she came back from her ’06 trip,” Kirk said. “That was kind of one of the reasons I went in ’07.”

Kirk, who sits on the foundation’s board of directors, went back to Africa earlier this month with her husband and a group led by King.

“We’re so privileged here in the U.S.,” Kirk said. “You can read about things and watch CNN, but until you go there and see it firsthand, you don’t get a true perspective of it. A dollar down there goes so much farther than we can even imagine.”

Stacy Lewis and her mother, Carol, also went on a trip with King in 2011, and Lewis had the chance to meet her sponsor child, Aline, in Rwanda. Lewis often recounts a touching scene in Aline’s home when the group came together in prayer and Carol Lewis noticed tears streaming down the face of Aline’s mother.

“It was such a shock to me that people live the way that they do,” said Lewis, “but they are so happy and so grateful. It just makes me thankful for everything that I have, and it gave me a renewed purpose of what I’m doing (on tour).”

Lewis said it took her a week to adjust to the simple things Americans take for granted every day, such as turning on a faucet to brush teeth or hopping into a car to grab groceries.

She now sits on the board of Golf Fore Africa. Carol and Lewis’ sister and brother-in-law helped raise $50,000 by running in the 2012 Chicago Marathon.

In addition to the two major golf tournaments King runs each year – one in Arizona and one around New York – she has started the Strong Women, Strong World luncheon.

This year’s event raised $120,000, up from $50,000 the first year. Much of the money funded micro-loans for African women. The average size of a loan to start a business in Africa is $200.

“It’s not hard to ask for help when it’s not for yourself,” said King, whose zest for the African people even took her to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, a hike that raised $70,000.

World Vision has a goal of bringing access to clean water to everyone in the world by 2030. King has pledged to do her part, committing to raising $1 million toward the effort in one year, a legacy that will outlast any trophy or hard-earned record.

Earlier this month in Zambia, King saw joy on the faces of children in the village of Mwalumina as they watched water rush to the surface during a well drilling.

King also visited wells funded by Lewis and women’s college teams at the Lady Paladin Invitational. Players secured birdie pledges for the September event and raised more than $30,000.

Violet’s village, King reported, also received a well this year.

Betsy King wants to talk to you about water. It’s a simple message: Give water, give life.