Beautiful Day, October 29th, 2010, is going to play an important role in the Life Campaign. It will be the focused fundraising day of the Campaign. While youth groups and students will be fundraising all throughout the year, we’d like to make one month of our busy calendar years to be our primary focus month for raising and gathering funds for the much needed wells around our world. By bringing a focus to the month of October, culminating with a Beautiful Day on the 29th, we hope to bring a higher profile to this very important cause.
Here’s where we need you:

1)    We’d like you to participate in our fundraising efforts.
Maybe you haven’t partnered with the Life Campaign yet and would like to be a part of what’s happening in our nation. We’re asking youth pastors, youth groups, schools, churches and campus groups, to plan at least one event before October 29th, so when we gather in our regional groups, we can celebrate bringing LIFE together! A great goal would be to raise $50/person represented in your group.
2)    We’d like you to be a part of a regional gathering by either attending, creating or hosting a Life Campaign event. The fun part of this Beautiful Day will be various groups coming together from all their local regions to celebrate the success of the Life Campaign for 2010. You could plan to connect with other groups from other provinces too, through Skype or through webcasting services. We have contact people in each province and territory across Canada who can help you get connected with other groups participating in the regional gatherings.
3)   We’d like you to help us get the word out. We have seen such amazing success early in the Life Campaign. The Life Campaign has started with a 10 year plan and we’ve barely scratched the surface of future possibilities. We want to transform communities, not only through clean water, but through other things like education, health care, and breaking past other areas of injustice.
More information will be provided to answer some of your questions regarding the Life Campaign and the maiden voyage of our Beautiful Day vision in the coming weeks and months.

Thanks for listening!  The Life Campaign team.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

CHONGWE, ZAMBIA. (Southern Africa)

VILLAGE OF HOPE - Full report below! 

January 2010 Village presently under development

Water comes to CHONGWE

The Village of Hope Site, Chongwe Zambia is located 40 Km’s east of the town centre of Lusaka. Chongwe town is the centre of rural area of the Chongwe District which is predominantly a farming community with a population of approximately one million people. Most of those people reside in small villages around the district and rely on farming for an existence. The population of the town of Chongwe is approximately 30,000. The area is not greatly developed and all roads are dirt except the main 2 lane highway which is paved and runs through the town of Chongwe from Lusaka to the Malawi boarder which is approximately 600 Km’s east of Chongwe. The Village of Hope site is just 500 meters off the main highway on a good dirt road. The Village of Hope site is situated on sloping piece of property which gives a ‘million dollar’ view of the surrounding countryside and the distant mountains.

Chongwe town is without any real infrastructure, except for an undersized, unreliable water system which operates intermittently, with very poor water pressure and must be boiled. During the last dry season, April to November there was no water supply for over a month and people had to walk many miles to obtain water and much of that water was not from a safe source.

The town water source is connected to the Village of Hope, which, based on pressure and reliably the supply will not always be able to meet the needs of the Village. When working at the site there have been numerous occasions when the workers had to roll barrels of water to and from the local stream in order to mix concrete so that construction could continue.

Presently there are homes on all sides of the Village of Hope property but less than 40% of those homes have access to a well or town water. As development of the Village of Hope continues and the presence of the Village of Hope in the community, it is our desire that we will be able to provide a clean, safe, healthy source of water not only to residents at Village of Hope, but also to those in the community surrounding the Village of Hope. In addition, one of the programs that is taught to the resident children is to plant gardens and grow their own fresh produce, therefore, without the water source, such as the one provided by the Life Campaign this program would not be able to be incorporated.

Tentatively the arrangements were to have the borehole drilled on Thursday but, to my surprise I received a call on Wednesday morning that the drilling team along with their rig was on their way to the site that morning. After the arrival of the equipment at the site the location of the borehole was confirmed and equipment set up and drilling began. After about 2 hours into the drilling an air hose blew and the spectators run for cover not expecting the loud noise or knowing the cause or danger. A replacement hose was needed before drilling could continue which then caused a delay of about 4 hours. When a replacement hose arrived and the drilling commenced again and water was soon seen coming up with the mud and rocks. Due to the loss of time, the drilling continued then until about 8 p.m., however it begins to get dark just after 6 p.m. As the drilling equipment reached the 50 meter level a strata of sand was hit which resulted in having to drill an additional 13 meters to get below the sand so the borehole would not fill in. At about 8:30 p.m. the casing for the pipe began and worker continued to work until about 11 p.m. which made it a long, but successful day. The drilling team slept on the site, but at first light began working towards installation of the hand pump and were finished about midday. As I was heading home for Lusaka about 4 p.m. on Thursday, there at the side of the highway was truck which had broken down. As I got closer I realized that it was the drilling team with their supply truck which had carried some of the drilling equipment and the casing pipes to the Village of Hope. Some days never end in Africa.

Thanks to the dedicated drilling team who worked very hard to drill the borehole so that the Village of Hope can have an abundant supply of clean safe WATER.

Thanks to the Life Campaign & ERDO for providing this Borehole on the Village of Hope site. This reliable source of water will provide LIFE to the Village of Hope and the community. It will establish the Village of Hope as the centre of the community by providing the safe water source and bring HOPE to many lives in Chongwe.

THANKYOU ‘LIFE JUST ADD WATER‘ Campaign

By Alan C. Wright

Village of Hope, Chongwe

Project Manager

I came across Life Campaign a couple of years back by a friend that told me about them, I read up on them off their website, I watched this video that they had up. I saw their heart for human life, and to impact lives. It inspired me and awakened something inside me. It was something that I’ve wanted to be apart of for a long time…I was blessed to have a second chance at life after my accident so why not help others have a second chance at life through the talents that God has given me.

I recently came out with an album called Actions, and the whole point of it is that actions speak louder then words…I can talk all day about how I want to change the world or do something positive, but it’s another thing to actually do something. We are giving $2. from the sale of every cd to the Life Campaign!

Showing love to others that are in need of it changes their lives…but also being the one to show it continually changes your life. It makes life a little changing at times but way more exciting and fulfilling.

- Pete Klassen of Love the Empire