Walk for Water challenges students to walk in less fortunate shoes

Oklahoma Christian University’s Wishing Well chapter challenged participants to walk in the shoes of those less fortunate than themselves on Thursday.

Partnering with Healing Hands International’s Walk for Water campaign, Wishing Well hosted a walk for water around the Eagle Trail, where willing participants could carry a jerry can filled with water to relate to children in Third World countries who have to carry out that task every day.

“Wishing Well is a club here at OC that raises awareness about the dirty water situation in Africa and raises money to build wells,” Yuvette Kramp, Wishing Well member, said.

Every fall, the club raises money for their cause with an event where people only drink water for 10 days in the cafeteria, which donates all the money saved from not buying other beverages to Wishing Well. Last year’s donation of $600 from the school’s cafeteria helped build a well in Rwanda.

Compared to other clubs on campus, Wishing Well is small with only four members, but it still holds annual events.

“We don’t have a huge active presence here on campus at the moment, but we look forward to having more people join us,” Wishing Well President Philip Kenzie said.

Doug Fair, the vice president of Healing Hands, and Doug Peters, a board member and a professor of biblical studies at Oklahoma Christian, talked about their personal experiences and stories regarding their cause with students that attended the walk.

“I came to learn more about the organization. I like learning about what people in other countries have to do,” freshman Camille Cave said. “We are in a first world country and we are used to having everything, whereas in other countries they have to work really hard their whole life. Our generation can definitely make a difference.”

Primarily from within Churches of Christ, Healing Hands does relief, agricultural, water and education efforts around the world in hopes to raise awareness that every 21 seconds a child dies from a disease caused by dirty water.

“A lot of places have water, just not clean, drinkable water that will not kill them,” Kramp said.

With Healing Hands’ next big project in Haiti, Fair said that even 10 years after the massive earthquake, there is still no running water, or if there is then it is contaminated.

One of their recent projects was in India, where a church reached out to them requesting water wells. When the group tested the water, they found high levels of arsenic, which required installation of reverse-osmosis filters that cost $30,000 apiece with wells that cost an average of $6,000. The whole project ended up costing them around $100,000.

So far, 1,500 people have been baptized in those churches, according to Fair, who said he believes they are making a great impact around the world.

“We started off as a disaster relief organization,” Fair said. “But If you were running a business and your income was predicated from a disaster, you would go out of business very fast, therefore, we changed our model to something more sustainable.”

Fair said the organization helps the communities they reach by setting sustainable systems and teaching agriculture and basic entrepreneurship skills in households.

Fair said that he believes it is time for the younger generation to get more involved because he sees a passionate generation ready to make a difference.

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