March 19, 2009
NORTHAMPTON, ENGLAND (ANS) -- As World Water Day takes place this coming Sunday (March 22), a Samaritans Purse team is walking the entire length of the River Thames in England this week to raise money for their vital water projects. En route the walkers will stop off at 10 Downing Street in London to urge UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to act urgently for better access to sanitation in the developing world.
Simon Barrington Executive Director of Samaritans Purse UK spoke to me during an Operation Christmas Child teams debrief weekend in Northampton, England and first of all told me more about their plans: “March 22nd is World Water Day and we have some volunteers Martyn Cotterell from Manchester and John Gant from Derby and they’re walking 183 miles, the whole length of the River Thames from its source in Cirencester up to the Thames barrier and along the way.
“Various people like me will be joining them doing a shorter length. In my case 14 miles from Tilehurst to Reading and including walking past Downing Street and we’ll be popping into number ten to present some postcards that we’ll have collected on the way. What we’re saying to the British government is this an outrage that 1.1 billion people around the world still don’t have access to safe water in 2009. So we’re calling on the government to increase its efforts to meeting the Millennium Development goals for access to sanitation.”
“It’s unlikely that we’ll meet with Gordon Brown, but I think representing the voice of the UK public, rising up to have their voice heard at the highest level is an important part of what we do.”
Increasing Aid in the Midst of the Credit Crunch
Simon is hoping that Gordon Brown will respond positively despite the government’s challenges of the credit crunch: “I was at Downing Street last December and heard Gordon Brown very clearly say then to a group of Christian leaders who were there that he was determined that even in the credit crunch, even with the issues the government is facing, that they were absolutely focused on ensuring that the amount of development aid didn’t drop.
“But I think there’s a challenge for us to actually increase that aid. People in the UK are having a hard time right now in terms of job losses, losing their homes, but at the same time we see an outpouring of compassion as people understand that even in those situations they have a relative amount of material goods and most people in the UK have access to clean water.”
While Samaritans Purse UK is putting pressure on the British government, Franklin Graham is urging US president Barack Obama to take action to help the people of Sudan. Simon says the situation there is extremely urgent: “Well the situation in Sudan has definitely deteriorated with 13 agencies being asked to leave Darfur last week and that’s put 1.5 million people at risk in the Darfur region. We currently have staff in South Darfur who are responding to that crisis and looking at what might be possible for us to up the level of aid there that we’re able to provide.”
Coming Together for Good
During the Operation Christmas Child debrief weekend for those that had been on shoebox distribution teams Simon made a presentation to delegates on their Samaritans Purse initiative Coming Together for Good: “Over the last couple of years we’ve seen Operation Christmas Child grow and recognize that it’s a fantastic project that links up individual people in the UK with children overseas and allows churches to get involved in their communities both proclaiming and demonstrating the Gospel.
“We’ve seen churches coming together in their communities with their schools. We’ve seen churches link up with churches overseas and we were trying to look for a phrase that will bring that out and explain it. So we’ve come up with ‘Coming Together for Good’ which really says this is about proclaiming and demonstrating. It’s about those two things coming together. It’s about churches and communities coming together to do some good. It’s about good in terms of the good work that we do but also in the terms of the good news that we want to share as well. It’s about a movement of people who actually come together saying we can make a difference.
“We can make a difference in a small way one child at a time. When that’s multiplied 1.3 million times to children every Christmas then it’s huge. We can make a difference to the 1.1 billion people who don’t have access to safe water. We can make a difference to the 15 million orphans who have been orphaned by HIV and AIDS and we call that ‘Coming Together for Good’.”
Small Things Make a Difference
Finally I asked Simon how the public can stand with Samaritans Purse in the midst of the current financial crisis: “It’s the small things that make a difference. It doesn’t take a lot. A single shoebox wrapped with some love and care even with some small items makes a massive difference to a child in Belarus or Ukraine or Mozambique.
“A water filter makes a huge difference to a family, providing them with safe water and costs $60 at the most, helping some with HIV/AIDS with the pledge a pound campaign, which says one pound will put a meal on the plate of an orphan family in Mozambique or Liberia. So a pound can make a difference, a shoebox can make a difference; a water filter can make a difference.
“The UK British public has always been generous and we see that generosity continuing even during the hardest times and what happens in the UK often is the harder the times get the more people rise up to respond and show that great British spirit. This is characteristic of us as a country in responding to issue not only in the UK but right around the world.”
Copyright 2009 ASSIST News Service. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
