Toloha Partnership has been given the incredible opportunity of partnering with Son Set Ministries for one of their annual camps, Erasing the Lines (ETL). ETL is a week in which middle school and high school students from local churches in Eastern NC gather to spend the week serving and showing Jesus to the community. This week (July 17-21) ETL is celebrating their 10th year with over 165 students participating.
When the students arrive they are broken into small groups (mixed ages/genders/churches) of about 10 students with a college or young adult leader. Groups are assigned varying work projects each morning and afternoon. Toloha Partnership is leading one of those work projects — we are leading the “water walk” this week!
You may be thinking, what is a water walk? I am glad you asked! The concept is very simple but the results are enormous. Groups are educated about the water situation in much of the developing world and then they are issued a challenge. Students are challenged to take a walk in the shoes of women and children who walk miles each day to gather life’s basic necessity – water.
It looks a little something like this:
Students fill up water jugs
Students carry the water back to Rochelle Middle School (2.4 miles) where the camp is based.
Along the way students have an opportunity to raise awareness by sharing with others what they are doing and why they are doing it. The students get it — they share about the need for physical water to flow as well as the living water of Jesus Christ. In Toloha, TZ, 56% of the Pare people claim Islam while 40% claim Christianity.
Someone has graciously agreed to donate $1 to Toloha Partnership for each gallon of water the students tote back to Rochelle. Each group is challenged to bring back at least 25 gallons – the groups from Tuesday exceeded this toting 33.4 and 35.5 gallons! That is a lot of water…especially when it weighs ~8 pounds per gallon!
It is certainly hard work but when these students hear that people are walking 6+ miles to gather dirty water, nothing will stop them from doing what they can to be a part of the solution.
This is just the start — check back for updates and more pictures later this week!