Our St Barnabas Youth Group recently led a lifestreams/nga puna waiora service over the weekend of the World Vision 40 hour fundraiser. They told us what they were fundraising for.

Toby: HI Isaac, how are you today?

Isaac: Tired, but better than going without food for 40 hours. I think I’ve been very lucky. At home and here at church I have water coming out of a tap, it doesn’t make me sick and I didn’t have to walk for 6kms there and back to carry it home in a bucket!

Toby: Can you remind us again what the theme for World Vision has been this year?

Isaac: Sure…”Change everything with clean water”. Ko te wai puna o te ora nga mea katoa – Water is the source of life for all things.

Toby: This is straight from the World Vision booklet we were given, but it sure cuts to the chase: Clean water is a human right. Right now, millions of kids in parts of Africa and Asia, and other countries too, do not have enough clean water to get through the day. When their water runs out, they must walk long distances and miss school to find more. When there is not enough water, they can’t wash their hands to fight diseases like Covid 19. When their water is dirty, they must drink it anyway even though every sip could make them sick.

Isaac: Pretty sobering, huh

Toby: Scary. I’d like to share our Whakatauki for this last month from Youth Group. We try to have one every month, relating to our current theme.

Whaia te iti Kahurangi ke te tuohu koe me he maunga teitei.

Seek the treasure you value most dearly: if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain.

We have talked about this Maori proverb while we’ve been planning. This whakatauki is about aiming high or for what is truly valuable, but the real message we took from it for our World Vision challenge is to be persistent and not let obstacles prevent us from reaching our goals. Our goal has been to work for our parish community to help us raise as much sponsorship as we can to help provide clean drinking water where it is most needed.

Isaac: The UN General Assembly has set Sustainable Development Goals for every country. The 2030 Target/Goal 6 aims to ‘ensure access to water and sanitation for all’ – that gives us 8 years. Let’s get busy!!

Toby: Thinking about sanitation, on one of our Youth Group evenings recently, we all had a go at making a handwashing station, called a Tippy Tap. We have one outside today and we’d like you to come and try it out!

Last year our St Barnabas Youth Group won the Isaiah Award, thanks to your huge generosity in sponsorship. No pressure but we really hope that you will be keen to sponsor us again, so that we can make a real difference for heaps of children in other countries who don’t have clean water.

The SBYG are about $300 away from their $1500 goal. If you would like to make a donation and help them reach their target, click here