RICHMOND, Va. — About 300 families in a northeastern South African village soon will have access to clean water, thanks to pocket change collected last year by hundreds of Virginia Baptist youths.
On April 7, work crews in Ngwenani, about 325 miles north of Johannesburg, began drilling a well — the village’s first regular supply of clean water — in front of the local Baptist church, which is easily accessible to the community.
Work crews begin drilling the new well in front of the Baptist church in Ngwenani. (Dean Miller photo)
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The $4,000 drilling operation is being funded by $7,660 raised by teenagers who attended 13 youth events sponsored by the Baptist General Association of Virginia in 2009. The “Change Matters” initiative — launched by Virginia Baptist leaders last year — encouraged participants at every youth-related event to toss their pocket change into a bucket or offering plate to support clean-water projects around the world.
“We had originally hoped that we would raise enough — $4,000 — for one well,” said Dean Miller, Virginia missions coordinator for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. “In the end, the youth gave almost double that.” The remaining $3,660 will provide indoor plumbing and clean water for a family in Southwest Virginia, a project that will be completed this summer by Virginia Baptist mission teams.
Miller was on hand to see the South African drilling operations, as were 13 high school juniors and seniors and five adult chaperones from Bonsack Baptist Church in Roanoke, Va. On behalf of hundreds of Virginia teenagers, the church group presented a symbolic check (the money was wired earlier) to leaders of Ngwenani Baptist Church, which is overseeing the project. The Roanoke team also will lead a Bible camp — which South African Baptists call a Holiday Adventure Club — for children and youth in the Ngwenani area.
“We had thought from the beginning it would be great to have a Virginia youth group present when the well was dug,” said Ken Dibble, youth ministry strategist for the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. “We tossed the idea to youth ministers across the state and Danny Quinn [minister of youth at Bonsack] picked it up and ran with it.”
A mission team from Bonsack Baptist Church in Roanoke, Va., represented hundreds of Virginia Baptist teens who helped fund the South African well. (Photo courtesy of Bonsack Baptist Church)
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Quinn and his team will remain in Ngwenani until April 14 and are posting updates here.
About 15 percent of South Africa’s 50 million people has no access to clean water, according to UNICEF. Private control of water distribution in the largely arid country has long been a contentious issue, complicated, as is much else in the nation, by a tortured racial history. The constitution adopted when apartheid ended guarantees every citizen the right to clean water, but high costs have kept that goal from being achieved.
In Ngwenani, one clean-water well was available to villagers and its pump was turned on by local authorities erratically only one day a week, usually without advance notice. Water was transported in a truck to the community, and families filled buckets and barrels from it for their own use.
Credo Mangayi, community ministries developer for the Baptist Union of South Africa, one of Virginia Baptists’ mission partners, said the new well will end the villagers’ hardship of waiting for the water truck and “wondering when the government well will be turned on.”
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“We praise the Lord that we are able to show the love of the Lord and not just preach it with our mouths,” said Mangayi, who also directs Deeds of Love Ministries, a mission arm of the union. “The gifts from the Change Matters offering have truly changed the lives of this community. It has made a difference. The partnership with Virginia Baptists has been terrific and this is yet another physical manifestation of those efforts.”
“On behalf of the church we say thank you for letting the volunteers from Bonsack Baptist Church come over,” said Edson Magoloi, pastor of Ngwenani Baptist Church and president-elect of the union. “It is just like angels answering Paul’s Macedonian call. The well will bring stability to the community and an outreach for the church.”
In an April 8 email, Miller said that 18 months after he and Dibble began conversations about the “Change Matters” offering, “it is thrilling to see a dream and vision come to fruition.”
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“Watching women and children carry water up the road for miles from an unclean stream and knowing that this well will bring health and wellness to hundreds of people is incredible,” he said. “It is also great to have the students here from Bonsack who contributed to the offering. They started their ‘Holiday Club’ this morning with 20 children. It swelled to over 90 by the afternoon and will exceed that tomorrow morning. And tomorrow they will clear space for the area where the community will fill their water bottles.”
The “Change Matters” initiative has continued this year at Virginia Baptist youth events, though the focus is now on world hunger relief, said Dibble.
“Each year the offering will focus on a different cause,” said Dibble. “Last year it was clean water, this year it’s hunger. We're looking at several possible world hunger relief projects for funds raised by the youth this year."
“This offering is part of a larger movement for all of Virginia Baptists to reach those people who have been pushed to the margins of our society,” said Miller. “It’s a movement, not a project.”
Dibble said Virginia Baptist leaders have set a 2010 goal of $10,000, which they hope to reach by junior high weekend, an annual youth event which this year will be held close to World Hunger Day on Oct. 10.
Last year, it was participants at senior high weekend who contributed the largest amount — $2,143 – gathered at any of the youth-related events in 2009. In addition to junior and senior high weekends, those events included a worship arts camp; MC2, a week of mission learning and involvement; Impact Virginia!, a week-long construction mission opportunity for teenagers; and the youth evangelism conference, which last year changed from a single location to a regional model with multiple locations.
Robert Dilday is managing editor of the Religious Herald.