By Jeff Brumley and Ken Camp
Water poverty has become an increasingly popular missions focus for U.S.-based churches, ministries and denominational groups in recent years.
“It’s a hot-button issue right now,” said Colleen Burroughs, executive vice president for Passport Inc., and founder and president of Watering Malawi, an advocate for clean water and systemic solutions to water scarcity, poverty and hunger in that east African nation.
It’s also a complex one that involves educating people about sanitation and hygiene. Burroughs said it took her a while to learn that.
“I thought it was going to be as simple as ‘let’s build some wells’ and now it’s ‘let’s build some bathrooms,’” she said.
Awareness of water needs around the globe is increasing. Denominational organizations, churches and stand-alone ministries are diving head first into water missions because they are relatively inexpensive and usually yield quick and dramatic results.
They’ve also been effective as part of a larger political effort to combat water poverty. United Nations figures suggest the number of people without access to safe drinking water has dropped from 1.1 billion to below 800 million since the 1990s.
The Living Water
For Christians, the interest in water poverty also has a spiritual component.
“By providing the physical water the people already know they need, we are able to introduce them to the Living Water,” Harold Patterson, vice president for the water ministry of Texas Baptist Men, told the TBM executive board last month.
TBM continues to distribute simple water purification systems — a gravity drip system using ceramic filters and readily available plastic buckets. TBM has shipped thousands of the water filters to more than 70 countries and trained local people to use them.
In recent months, Patterson said, TBM also has become involved in two additional aspects of water ministry — well-drilling and training in health, hygiene and sanitation to eliminate the spread of water-borne diseases and prevent contamination of water sources.
Patterson and his wife, Kathy, together with Phil Davenport from First Baptist Church in Garland, Texas, drilled three wells in Eku, Nigeria. Working in partnership with Walking in Love Ministries, they also trained local Christians to operate the drilling rig they left in Eku.
“After that, the chiefs’ council there approved 14 more sites for wells,” Patterson said. “Each one will provide water for about 2,000 people.”
After five failed attempts, the water ministry also successfully drilled a well for a town in the Himalayas of Manipur, India. The well will provide a water source for Leishiphung Christian Hospital.
As the water ministry continues to develop, participants learn how to improve processes to make them more cost-effective and efficient, Patterson said. In the future, he hopes to build low-cost solar-powered well pumps that will be able to operate in remote areas that lack electricity.
Need for education
But those desperately in need of water aren’t out of the woods yet.
“There are a lot of organizations that are working on this … but there is a huge way to go,” said Kevin Herr, church partnerships manager for Charleston, S.C.-based Water Missions International.
Along with reports of impressive decreases in numbers of people without safe water, there are other reports of increases — to as many as 1.8 billion, Herr said.
On Tuesday, the organization announced a new “Step Into The Unknown” educational campaign to encourage current and future donors to give not only funds but their hearts to the cause. Herr said it’s important they appreciate how long it takes for the ministry’s indigenous teams — primarily in Africa, Latin America and Indonesia — to establish long-lasting, effective water systems.
“It’s not mission trips going over but local, indigenous staff going back to those communities on a monthly basis,” he said.
The technology involved is relatively simple, but the training and education that goes into helping locals use it effectively is not simple, he said.
“It has gained popularity the last couple of years, the water crisis in general, and more people are getting engaged and fighting against it,” Herr said. “It’s more than putting in a piece of equipment in a community and saying a prayer.”
‘You can’t just build wells’
Christians are likely to hear more and more about water poverty and related ministries as time goes on.
“Mikhail Gorbachev said water is the next oil,” Burroughs said.
Water is a finite resource that is being stretched thin by a rapidly grown world population, Burroughs said. It’s a topic that is not going to go away.
“It’s something that people need to pay attention to,” she added.
They also need to realize that water poverty is a complicated problem that involves more than providing people with water to drink or cook with. Communities in need of safe water equally need sanitation and bathing facilities — and to be educated on why they are important.
“You can’t just build wells,” Burroughs said.
