Providence Hall students Carys Davies, Luke Schurmer, Ben Brymer and several others are leading an effort to raise money to provide clean water to children and families in need in places such as Honduras, Haiti and Africa.
These service-minded students are recruiting members of the Providence Hall community to join the school team in the Walk4Water on May 4. The approximately three-mile walk will begin and end at East Beach in Santa Barbara. Walks are also being held this spring in Denver and San Francisco.
Davies spoke in the Providence Hall chapel service on April 15 to tell students about the walk and to share her enthusiasm for bringing clean water where it is needed around the world.
In an interview, she said she “likes helping people and seeing the joy it brings” when a water filtration system is delivered. “I am fortunate to have clean water whenever I turn on a faucet. I have seen dirty water and how bad it is.”
She saw dirty river water when she accompanied a water filtration installation team to Kenya. She was appalled when she saw women racing to the river to get water for their families — water that is dirty and carries organisms causing diseases such as malaria and cholera.
The Walk4Water supports the work of Hands4Others (H4O), a movement of young people to provide clean, safe, drinkable water to those in need around the globe. The organization has sponsored water filtration projects in ten countries to date. Hands4Others works with Water Missions International to install and maintain water filtration systems.
Hands4Others was launched four years ago in Santa Barbara by teenagers Jack Davies (Carys’s older brother) and his friends Spencer Dusebout and Scott Schurmer.
When asked what she views as the primary benefit of the work of Hands4Others, Carys replied, “Health. People aren’t dying as much.” She also pointed out that when a group of volunteers delivers a water system, “they bring the living water of Jesus, too.” At the time a water system is installed, volunteers present the message of Christ through translators.
The goal for this year’s Walk4Water is to raise $50,000, enough to provide water filtration systems for five villages in Africa, Haiti and Honduras.
Carys looks forward to traveling to Haiti this summer to deliver a water system. Twenty members of her youth group at Calvary Chapel also plan to go on the trip.
To join these young people in their effort to bring clean water to the world one village at a time, click here to go to the Walk4Water website to join or support the Providence Hall team or to create a new team.
Providence Hall is a Christian, independent college preparatory school serving grades seven through 12.
— Elaine Rottman is the director of advancement at Providence Hall.