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I love watching children play. It does not matter where you are in the world - they come up with their own games and adapt well-known games to have house rules. They smile and they laugh and they run and they use their imagination. The world and its worries slip away because their fun, their smiles, are bigger than those worries. 

Since 40 Days of Water started we've been hearing some truly great stories from people participating. We have been and will continue to share them along the way on our Twitter and Facebook pages. However, we want to share a couple of the reflections you may have missed. Send us links to yours as well and we may post it.


One participant, Robert shared this reflection on starting his 40 Days:

"Ultimately though, even though it feels like a sacrifice, giving up water for 40 Days isn't that big of a deal personally.  I still have a nice apartment, plenty of food, and water.  When I want water - anytime I want water - I go to the sink and turn it on.  I have cold, fresh, clean water (I have a water filter I can use as well).  I can fill up my Nalgene and carry it wherever I go.  Today I easily drank close to 100 oz. of clean water - I never worried about where my next sip of water was going to come from or if it would make me sick.  That's why I'm doing 40 Days of Water.  Not drinking coffee, milk, juice, or wine only makes me think about missing those things.  Replacing it with water I can have whenever I want reminds me that there are many people who can't.  And by me making a simple sacrifice for a short period of time I can take a small step to change that for a few people.  For every $1.oo I save one person in Uganda can have water for a year.  One person can have life."

You can read more of Robert's thoughts on his blog.

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A group of students organizing a 40 Days of Water campaign at Virginia Tech shared their thoughts in their college paper:

 "We give all these statistics but it's still not really personal to our lives," said Sam Choi, a junior accounting major at Virginia Tech. "Participating in the campaign will hopefully show students what people in these communities have to live with every single day. They can't choose, and we can, so hopefully the campaign will encourage students to choose to help those less fortunate than they are."

Justin Gross, a graduate student in accounting, wanted to emphasize the simplicity of helping to change the lives of these people.

"We don't realize how simple it would be to help these people," Gross said. "The reality is that $1 would provide a person in Africa with clean water for an entire year. Forty days of only drinking water won't just solve everything," Gross continued. "It's simply allowing us to step out of our reality into theirs for a change and realize that it is up to us to continue to help the communities in Africa and change their lives for the better."

Read more on these students' effort HERE

This story originally appeared at the Plywood People blog.

I know a girl named Jennifer who walks for most of her day. Not by choice but by absolute need. One step in front of the other brings Jennifer closer to a source of water, water that is needed to survive. She carries a bright yellow bucket in one arm and the hand of her younger sister in the other. Her calloused feet meet the dirt path with ease and levity. She passes neighbors, livestock, mud huts with thatched roofs, and the primary school down the road.

After thirty minutes of walking, Jennifer and her sister dip their buckets in the filth of a muddy river. They do their best to swirl the water before dipping their buckets deep into the water so as to push away the clumps and bugs that sit along the surface of the brown water. With remarkable grace, each girl places her 20 pound bucket on her head and walks back. Their bare feet hit against the dirt of the path, passing yet again the primary school down the road, the mud huts with thatched roofs, the livestock and the neighbors. When they arrive home, they empty their buckets into a large tub. Invisible bacteria swim in the water, causing serious stomach aches, skin infections and life-threatening diseases to the members of the family. They will use it for drinking, cleaning and cooking. It is what they have, and so it is what they use.  Jennifer turns around to walk back along the dirt path with her bright yellow bucket in one arm and the hand of her younger sister in the other, to return to the river once more.

I have clean water at the turn of a tap. What takes many girls around the world hours to get, I have in seconds. It is a juxtaposition of the world that brings discomfort to so many of us, and rightly should! I have many friends who observe Lent and choose to give something up for the length of the Lenten season. Some people give up sweets, others give up Facebook. There is a movement of people that is choosing to give up all beverages but water for Lent. It means that we will go 40 days and make tap water our only beverage. We will save up all the money we would have spent on coffee, soda, beer, wine and juice over the 40 days and donate it to provide THE essential beverage for Africans -  clean water. Through the work of Blood:Water Mission, thousands of girls with yellow buckets are no longer walking to get filthy water because a clean water source has been brought to their villages. Jennifer is one of them, and she is now able to attend school and to be rid of stomach aches and skin infections.

In a world that feels overwhelmingly impersonal, this small sacrifice that many of us will take on for the next 40 days will give us the deepest and most beautiful connection to the provision of clean water for girls we have yet to meet. Please consider joining us in this.

www.bloodwatermission.com/40days

~ Jena Nardella, Executive Director
    Blood:Water Mission

Meet Jennifer. View a video of Jennifer and her family and home:

from the Powell Family Blog

I've been to high-level summits discussing global water and HIV/AIDS initiatives.  You know, the kind where you have tables with a little microphone and a bottle of water at each chair and huge podium up front with a logo the size of a stadium projected on the backdrop behind? The kind where 400 people in suits and polished shoes are milling about and you hear phrases like "food security task force" and "efficacy of Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission" floating above the hum of conversation.

This wasn't like that at all.  We had 6 chairs pulled up around a table, which had tea-stained napkins and cookie crumbs on it.  Our backdrop consisted of a couple small windows that projected light onto the painted cinderblock walls of an otherwise dim basement.  And none of us were wearing suits. 

But in spite of the humble surroundings in the basement of a friend in New York City, there was a sense of excitement as Blood:Water Mission and 3 organizations discussed the integration of HIV/AIDS and water programs for transforming the lives of people living in Africa. 

As Blood:Water has explored ways to be more integrated in our approach to AIDS and water, we have recognized the need for the collective voices of our partners - both in America and in Africa - to come together to speak into this need.  It was almost by divine appointment that we were able to congregate in NYC during what is unarguably the busiest time of the year.

Experts in their own countries, these organization shared their vision and knowledge over tea and coffee, speaking into the challenges and needs shared by one another.  At the end of a long day, a row of cups and sugar packets arranged in a diagram was all we had to show for our work.  But it was enough.  It represented a wholistic approach for integrating AIDS and water in what are some of Africa's most challenging regions.  While still a plan in it's infancy, it will be a launching pad for what I hope will be some of the most exciting work Blood:Water has ever engaged in. 

This, I believe, is the greatness of what we as a community possess - where individually our efforts may feel inconsequential, but when we join together, there is a strength that can overcome even the challenges of poverty.  Ironically, it's a lesson easily forgotten.  Ironic because this is the lesson we work so hard to instill in communities in Africa - that poor as they are, if they will work together, they possess the power to change their future.  John Donne spoke well when he said "no man is an island".  The same is true for organizations.  The same is true for each of you who is on this journey with us. 

As we close out 2009, I'm excited about the coming year.  Excited about our partnerships. Excited about all the people who have contributed to the Mission this Season.  Great things are afoot.

-Barak Bruerd, Director of Africa Programs

Laughter. My time in Uganda was filled with laughter. We laughed when we saw each other in the morning, when we told stories, when we walked through villages, when we shared tea, and simply at a funny look. In a moment there is laughter. Contagious laughter. So beautiful; I wish I could bottle it up and take it home. I once got an email from a colleague listening to my laughter through our shared wall that was titled, "I love your laughter." She would have loved to have been in Uganda with me where laughter is sometimes found in the unlikeliest of things.
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Dear Friends,

Many of you have been following the story of the community of Marsabit, in northern Kenya. It's a place that is dear to our hearts, that has been overlooked by many, but is a significant area of focus for us this year. Thanks to your donations, the doors of the Tumaini Clinic (which means "hope" in Swahili) have opened and over 660 people have been served and 85 individuals have been enrolled in the HIV program...   

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