Amongst the friends and conversation and laughter and music we raised over $1500 for our first good.well project.
April 30th at Café Agora was the celebration of my 40th birthday. With all honesty it was really just a great opportunity to raise money and awareness for the Good Trust, and to raised funds to build clean water wells for a communities off shore.
Thanks heaps to everyone who came and donated.
Thanks to the team at Café Agora.
Finally and a huge thanks to Luke and Linden (pictured) and Alice Cunninghame.
Category: Do Good (Page 3 of 3)
On Sunday we heard first hand about incredible work of Rahab ministries in Thailand, and got to support them through the pink pigs. In Thailand young women, really young women are sold by their families to prostitution, often under false circumstances and with the lure of a better life, but sold nonetheless.
I can’t imagine ever getting so desperate, that I would even remotely consider selling my daughter. It would never happen!
Imagine the outcry, the laws I would break and the news coverage.
It would shock our nation.
I’m reminded that my world is not the world. Every day young women are sold. There is no outcry, no laws broken, no news coverage.
My world, is not the world.
Water.
Where I live it’s free, but we buy it. It’s clean, but we filter it. It’s readily available, but we take it for granted.
Water is a significant part of the poverty cycle. It takes hours out of a persons day. Imagine waking up today and having to go and find water to survive before you do anything else.
1 in 8 people in the world lack clean water. Will you make a difference?
[149 | 365 – ‘Clean Water’ – This is a shot of Kyla, my eldest daughter, drinking fresh, clean tap water.]
When I was in Fiji recently, Karina and I hired a car for the day. We wanted to drive to places that most people wouldn’t go. We wanted to see the people of Fiji. To experience. To open our eyes.
On this particular day we met with Karl (from Malomalo). He graciously led us down the coast where we checked out the water. Karl explained that the average income for the people of Fiji is $1 – $2 per hour. But the cost of living is basically the same as New Zealand.
Our journey with Karl took us down some serious back roads which was fun. We travelled through villages that 99.9% of visitors to Fiji will never see. Unlike the Villagers on the main road, they are not sponsored by Coke or Pepsi. They don’t have signs up saying they are supported by NZAID. They are just villages.
On the way back to our resort. I took these two pictures. The first is 3 guys working collecting sugar cane. As I slowed on the railway lines I took another, because I thought the lines of the track were cool. One of the guys called to this older man and he stood and posed for the picture.
I took the picture, gave him a wave and kept driving. At the time he was just a picture. Now the picture has become so much more.
I didn’t care about his circumstances.
I don’t know his name.
His family.
His needs.
Him!
He may not have had needs. He may have been happier and more content than me. But to him, I am sure, I was just another rich tourist who took a photo and kept driving.
The picture will be a vivid memory of the day I went to see the needs of the people of Fiji and forgot to see the needs of the individual before my eyes. I forgot to be.
I think we do that often.
Today 8000 people will die of aids. Today 11000 people will become infected with aids (mainly women and children). 115,000,000 people will die by 2015 (just 7 years away)
Aids is our generations leprosy www.one.org