I inquired about Christmas and what they were intending to do for the children this Christmas and I learned that the hope was to provide the traditional gift of a new set of clothes or a school uniform. Apparently it is within their custom to give clothing each Christmas and seeing that New Life and their sister home in Chintalapudi is solely funded through the One Life Child Sponsorship program for the basics such as food, shelter and education it then becomes necessary to find outside funding for any “extras” such as another set of clothes. I was under the impression as a sponsor of 4 kids that my dollars took care of all these things but then I read the fine print and heard first hand that what is received doesn’t cover this “extra”.
I thought to myself when did clothes become extra especially when considering all you have is 2 or maybe 3 outfits total in the whole wide world to your name?

I further thought about the passage of scripture where Jesus spoke of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and caring for the orphan and the widow and asked myself was there any part of this passage that I didn’t understand?
That is when I began to consider my closet and that of my children. I have been in the place where the kids at New Life sleep and no part of it is really a typical room nor do they have a closet for that matter. What they have if they are lucky is a small box or a chest for which all their belonging belong and in no way does it compare with what we have. Think here of a play chest filled with play clothes or doll clothes that is the picture of what a 7 or 12 year old boy/girl has at New Life.

Small pickings for sure.

It doesn’t take long for me to go down this road of what I should do. So down I went and here I am asking you for help.

What does it cost to clothe a boy/girl at New Life? Not much, $15 gets them a new outfit. What would be better still would be for you to give $30 and that way we can get them a uniform for school and a set of casual clothes like a t-shirt and pants for boys or a Punjabi for girls.

Hopefully now you are realizing clothing a child is an important thing to do and is really easy to do.

So how then do you join me in this?

Just click PayPal Donate button below and use your Credit Card to help me meet the need.

If you don’t know how much to give consider this: $15 buys 1 set of clothes for 1 child and there are 190 kids at New Life and another 50 at Chintalapudi so you do the math; we need a lot of money!

Thanks for your help and one last thing, there is a deadline. All funds need to be collected and sent to India by December 10.

As always everything you give is tax deductible and no part is held back for administrative fees, so give with that confidence that your gift will be clothing!

A huge THANK YOU to Jeff Bangs and the Community Service Club for all of their hard work and for making this event a huge success. 

Also, a shout out to probably the greatest Elementary School principal in the USD 233, Susan DeGroot, for supporting Jeff, the Service Club and Wells for Life.

Susan, now you need to come to India to see your water projects!

Click here to see the printed advertisement  – Water Ride 2011

Brief ride details are as follows: Pre-Registration starts at 9 and ends at 10.  Kick stands up around 10 and off we go on a 100 mile ride. 

Ride starts and stops at Johnny BBQ in Olathe on Old Hgwy 56.

If you want to register online then you can do so by going to our Home Page and click on the Give Now button and then “donate” the appropriate amount; make sure you write “Water Ride” in the special instruction field. 

Alternatively you can click this link -  Water Ride 2011 print out the registration form, fill it out and mail it in with your check made payable to Wells for Life and memo’d “Water Ride”.  

Everything raised is going towards making an impact in rural India through providing clean, safe drinking water.

What am I talking about? 

I am speaking of a situation that exists right now outside of Trichy.  Our partner, DPWA, runs almost a dozen schools with some providing refuge at night for students who come from families with no homes or who are orphaned in some way. 

One such school, Infant Jesus High School which is a public school, has been providing 450 kids a place to stay at night, granted it’s the classrooms but at least it is inside a school with a boundary wall and is safe.  Because this is a school and not an orphanage per se, the government officials from the Education department are telling those in charge at the school that the kids can’t stay and they must go.  In other words they are sending the kids out and forcing them to fend for themselves; to find food, shelter, safety. 

I don’t know how you feel about street children, sex trafficking, or the slave trade but in India all of this is prevalent in society and just because it is on the other side of the world doesn’t mean that we are absolved from our responsibility to do something.  

I realize that what is taking place right now with Infant Jesus is not uncommon and probably doesn’t stack up against the truck loads or container loads of women and children that are being exploited and trafficked all over the world and even here in America, and yet none the less like those, these children are being placed in harm’s way and these children have a right to be helped too.

What is being requested is found in this link – Infant Jesus School project

What I am proposing is that we all do something; large or small, it doesn’t matter.  My wife and I will personally put up $1,000 for this and ask that this be matched by 39 others.  This project needs our attention and our help.

You can give on our website by clicking on the GIVE button on our homepage, just mark the gift Infant Jesus and 100% will go towards fulfilling this need.  Together we can see this project through to completion and provide a safe place for these 450 kids.

The event was pretty cool; the entertainment was first rate, the Indian food not to bad, (you have to understand I am pretty picky and due to no chicken I only give it a “not to bad” though my wife said the different vegetarian dishes were to die for) thankfully there was cookies, ice cream and brownies from a local bakery which produced lines longer than when In and Out first came to town. 

From a money raising perspective, we did well considering none of us are professionals however those that make this event so successful could become professionals.   I can’t name all the names of those involved but at the least I can recognize Valerie and her small team for making this event a huge success.

As in any event we do and with every donation we receive, regardless of where it comes from, the constant theme is to put that money to good use.  Much is coming out in the news about charitable giving and the use and misuse of funds and all I can comment on accurately is what I know about what we do here at Wells for Life and seek to be as accurate and as transparent as possible concerning our use of funds.  I would only hope that other nonprofit organizations do the same, both small and large, and be upfront and honest about how they carry out business.  It’s pretty easy to hide salaries in programs and in fact it seems to be an accepted practice amongst many in the field, after all you got to get paid yet there are those organizations like mine where no salaries are taken and no fancy cars or expensive planes are had; just normal people seeking to do extra ordinary things with whatever resources are made available to them.

Numbers used to drive me when looking at results.  Not so much now and I believe this is because my work is now about people and not projects.  In many ways my work has become more personal, unfortunately though, probably not personal enough and this is due to the geographical separation as well as the amount of time that lapses between my visits to India, yet despite the challenges, the truth remains that my work is about people.

Each and every day there is a young child or a mother hoping for another day of life, wondering where the next meal will come from or whether or not there will be any electricity to drive the motor for the water pump so that water might be drawn from the tank.  Life is much different in rural India than for us here in America and I hope in the future to do a better job in painting that picture and telling that story here so that I might move someone to get involved financially with our work.  Without help I can’t bring water, I can’t provide hope, I can’t make a difference and I am learning that in order to get that help I need to do a better job at telling the story.  With time I hope to tell the story and share a photo or two to reinforce what I am talking about.  In the meantime just allow the pictures to speak for themselves. 

Here is a link to get you started – http://www.flickr.com/photos/wellsforlife/sets/72157626126121451/.

I share the radio spot and bring up this fundraising event for the sole purpose of reminding us all that we can make a difference in changing lives.  Many people don’t get involved in a cause because they don’t know what will happen to their money or they think that their time doesn’t really make a difference in the grand scheme of things but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

The fact is, you can make a difference regardless of who you are.

I remember being about 8 and sending in the mail a couple of bucks because I thought they needed my money, after all I received a post card with an autographed picture of the President of the organization on the front and a personalized letter stating that my gift was needed for their cause.  Little did I know that those letters are really easy to produce thanks to technology but hey, I was 8 and this was way before offices had computers.  They had something that generated these things before the digital age as born.  Anyway, having a personalized letter appealed to me and so I mailed in a couple of dollars every month and boy was I excited when one day a lapel pin was sent to me.  A free gift, wow, maybe I should give more was my thought and so I did; after all every little bit helps.  Oh, the mind of a naive 8 year old boy.

Now, I have my own non profit organization, I am the founder and the president and thanks to the digital age I could easily produce autographed and personalized pictures of me pointing at the reader asking them for their gift and thanking them in advance for that gift on the back side.  Thankfully, I haven’t sucummed to that form of fundraising and I promise not to ever send out an autographed picture of me.

I share this story only to say, even at 8 I realized a difference could be made with a couple of bucks and I still feel this to be true today.  If every 8 year old in America gave $1 or $2 a month to me for clean water in India, think of the difference that could be made.  There have got to be at least a million 8 year olds in America and if they only gave $1 each month; wow, 1 million dollars coming in every month for clean water in India.  Think of the impact and the difference that could be made.  I could go on and on with what kind of impact I could make with that kind of money, especially since 95% of what we bring in we utilize on programs which fulfill our mission in India.

I think I am on to something here but had better stop because I need to go pick up my kids from school and I don’t want to be late but I think you get the picture; we can make a difference, each one of us.  All we need to do is to work collectively together and some good will take place provided of course we are all working towards the same goal, were organized and focused and we accept the fact that we all can’t be leaders.  Enough of the organizationa end of things; that can all be worked out, what matters is the difference that can be made if we all just did something, that is the point I am trying to make.

Now back to this Saturday, if you can, join me at BollywoodH2O as it promises to be a fun event and if you don’t live in Northern California well, I don’t have much to offer you other than this – join us by supporting our mission of bringing life change to rural India, one life at a time.

…is coming really soon.  Don’t delay get your tickets now!

If you are wondering what BollywoodH2O is all about and whether or not you should go let me say first of all you should go and second you should bring your check book!  Seriously.  This event will be rocking; Sidewalk Prophets and Jimmy Needham will be performing and you’ll be rolling in laughter with Dhaya Lakshminarayanan who is a stand up comedian and did I mention food from Pamposh as well as Lotus Cuisine of San Rafael?

This entire day, or at least from Noon to 4 p.m. will be geared towards raising money for Wells for Life® and everything given will be used to make a difference in India. 

All donations are tax deductible and the day promises to be fun, so come on out and join us but get your tickets now because once there gone, there gone! 

Click here to be taken to the  Official BollywoodH2O ticket website

I am attaching the proposal that I received from Fr. Dhana of DPWA and am asking that you read it and consider involving yourself financially with this project.  I can promise you that if you give, everything that you give will go towards this project with nothing held back by myself or DPWA.

Construction for Infant Jesus School

There are no pictures or video to compel you to give, just me asking and you reading the above by clicking on the link, go ahead and click! 

What I can tell you is that I have witnessed firsthand these kids and I know the difference that is being made in their lives as a result of the Christian based education they are receiving and I know that the kids coming out of this place can compete academically with the kids in the government schools and what’s better is that they are also armed with an understanding of God and His love for them as uniquely created thus instilling self worth and a confidence that I find lacking in so many young people today.

To invest in this project and to see the school remain open all you need to do is make a donation to Wells for Life® using our Give button on the home page and mark your gift DPWA or School and I will make sure all of your gift gets to DPWA for the express purpose of this project.

Thanks so much for considering this and doing something about it!