A Gang of Little World Changers

In case you may have missed it, my 5 year old son is raising $5,000 to build a well for the Bakaya people in the Central African Republic for his birthday.  We launched his campaign almost four days ago and so far he has raised $3,000 towards the well!  All of us are blown away.  You can go here to donate if you like.  Or here to read Tariku's own story of growing up with contaminated water in Ethiopia.

One of the amazing things to me is that there have been so many children who have contributed to Tariku's water campaign.  I've had a couple of emails like the following over the past few days:

"Amy, I talked about this with Luke and Anna. Luke is so sad for Tariku and for losing his little brother. That would be like Luke losing Charlie, who just turned one year old. Luke is getting his bank, and we are talking about how to give more! Thanks for impacting my kids, too!"


"So, it's been a few more days, and wow!!! Almost $3000! Just amazing!!! My kids are still talking about the well and asking several times a day what the total is. I feel so grateful that my kids are experiencing this at such a young age."

"After reading Tariku's story and watching the video, our kids were appalled that clean water is not available to everyone and amazed that this is really going on in our world right now! They were also effected that someone they knew came from this exact situation. ("Ella's brother didn't have clean water AND he had bugs in his tummy???!!!") It really made it tangible for them.  Immediately after watching your video, Alli went and literally dumped out her "spending" jar and said, "I want to give it all" and Jack came over with a fist full of his spending money and said, "Bam! Give it all, mom!" It literally made me cry!!! How neat to see God working on their little hearts...not to mention mine!"
 
Isn't that just awesome?!  It is humbling to see children understanding the injustice of a world where not everyone has clean water.  And even more so, that they are not just understanding it, but are going to their own piggy banks and emptying them on behalf of others.  I would imagine THAT would bring a smile to any parent's face. It sure does mine.
 
Then today we actually had Tariku's birthday party.  The kids who came were asked to forgo buying a new toy for Tariku and simply bring a donation to the well, and if they felt compelled to give something to Tariku, to bring a used toy from their house. So, with 19 kids from five different families (we had three African countries represented in our little gang of kiddos!), we celebrated Tariku.  And we celebrated the fact that an entire community in Africa will have clean water thanks to them. It was so fun and cool to watch the kids engage. 
 
We sat them all down in front of the laptop and let them watch this video:
 

charity: water 2010 September Campaign: Clean Water for the Bayaka from charity: water on Vimeo.
 
I couldn't believe how they stayed engaged.
 



 
They watched as we explained what they were seeing.
 

 
And they all smiled when Tariku started pointing to the kids drinking clean water at the end of the video.  His excitement was so ridiculously sweet!  I just love my little man!
 

 
Wow.  Kids are awesome.  We are so grateful for our awesome friends who have stepped up to not only learn about clean water, but to give to and to pray for those who don't have it.  I don't know, folks...I think we might all just be raising little world changers.  Maybe it's time we start seeing them as such.