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Water to Wine aims to slake the poor’s thirst
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TIDELAND NEWS
PAM LAWS
When Chris Johns of Peletier went to Tanzania on a fact-finding mission in November, evidence of poor drinking water was everywhere.
Touring the country with missionaries Barbara and Elton Cooke, Johns said he only needed to look to the street to see the problem. Young girls, students on their way to school, would stop at what was basically a mud puddle in front of the home where he was staying to get their drinking water for the day.
The Cookes, who live in Tanzania, invited Johns to the African nation after they learned that he had an interest in raising funds to provide clean drinking water for developing countries. They offered to introduce him to officials with non-government organizations that are working on clean-water projects.
Meeting with Meschak, a church leader in a Tanzanian village, reinforced the spiritual nature of the effort, according to Johns.
“Today we know God has not forgotten us,” Meschak told him. The Tanzanian was buoyed by the fact that people from as far away as the United States cared enough to help.
“We hope to meet the physical needs, then the spiritual needs,” said Johns. “We are seeking God’s will through every bit of this.”
Johns kicked off the Water to Wine fundraiser at RuckerJohns, the Emerald Isle restaurant he and his wife, Polly, own, on Monday. Over the next couple of weeks, the effort will be extended to the RuckerJohns restaurants they own in Wilmington and Winterville.
The idea for the fund-raiser is simple, ask restaurant patrons to donate 25 cents for a glass of water, according to Johns.
Carolina Coast Online Web Feature! Listen to Chris Johns explain how it all began:
“It’s not my idea,” he added. “God dropped it in my lap and said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’”
Johns first considered the idea of charging for a glass of water long before he associated it with the project.
“I was looking at rising food prices for the restaurant in 2008,” he explained. “I started looking at the cost of water and sewer and I decided I wanted to charge 25 cents for a glass of water to help offset the cost. I spoke with my wife, Polly, about it and she said that wasn’t the way we did business.”
Then, during a morning devotional, he said the Lord put this idea in his head: If you are going to charge for water, then you have to give it away.
That notion blended with the fact that water quality issues are a huge problem in much of the developing world. Charge 25 cents for a glass of water, but use the money to help others.
The idea for the name of the organization came to Johns by way of the wedding in Cana, where Jesus performed his first miracle, turning water into wine.
John 2:6-10, states: “Jesus ordered the servants to fill the empty containers with water and to draw out some and take it to the chief waiter. After tasting the water that had become wine, and not knowing what Jesus had done, he (the chief waiter) remarked to the bridegroom that he had departed from the custom of serving the best wine first by serving it last.”
To Johns, the similarity is obvious.
“This (water purification) would be like transforming bad water (into) the best wine,” he said.
Providing clean water could have a huge impact for millions of people, according to Johns. Every 15 seconds a child dies from a water-related illness. And 84 percent of all deaths from water-related illness are among children under 14 years old.
“If you don’t have water, you can’t live,” he said. “The most basic and fundamental part of life is water.
“We (hope to) use a network of restaurants across the nation to make the dining public aware of this problem.”
By forming the federally approved 501(c) 3 non-profit organization, Johns hopes to create a community with restaurants across the state and eventually across the country.
Should 25 percent of the nation’s 750,000 restaurants take part and collect an average of $50 a day, the effort could produce nearly $3.5 billion annually, according to Johns.
Funds raised could be used to improve water quality in several ways, he points out. These include providing water purification packets that turn contaminated water into drinking water, using bio-filters and sand filters and improving traditional wells by sealing them and installing pumps. The cost to install a well is between $16,000 and $18,000.
Johns said that as the project goes forward, the NGOs would oversee distribution of funds by partnering with the local villages.
When Chris Johns of Peletier went to Tanzania on a fact-finding mission in November, evidence of poor drinking water was everywhere.
Touring the country with missionaries Barbara and Elton Cooke, Johns said he only needed to look to the street to see the problem. Young girls, students on their way to school, would stop at what was basically a mud puddle in front of the home where he was staying to get their drinking water for the day.
The Cookes, who live in Tanzania, invited Johns to the African nation after they learned that he had an interest in raising funds to provide clean drinking water for developing countries. They offered to introduce him to officials with non-government organizations that are working on clean-water projects.
Meeting with Meschak, a church leader in a Tanzanian village, reinforced the spiritual nature of the effort, according to Johns.
“Today we know God has not forgotten us,” Meschak told him. The Tanzanian was buoyed by the fact that people from as far away as the United States cared enough to help.
“We hope to meet the physical needs, then the spiritual needs,” said Johns. “We are seeking God’s will through every bit of this.”
Johns kicked off the Water to Wine fundraiser at RuckerJohns, the Emerald Isle restaurant he and his wife, Polly, own, on Monday. Over the next couple of weeks, the effort will be extended to the RuckerJohns restaurants they own in Wilmington and Winterville.
The idea for the fund-raiser is simple, ask restaurant patrons to donate 25 cents for a glass of water, according to Johns.
Carolina Coast Online Web Feature! Listen to Chris Johns explain how it all began:
“It’s not my idea,” he added. “God dropped it in my lap and said, ‘What are you going to do about it?’”
Johns first considered the idea of charging for a glass of water long before he associated it with the project.
“I was looking at rising food prices for the restaurant in 2008,” he explained. “I started looking at the cost of water and sewer and I decided I wanted to charge 25 cents for a glass of water to help offset the cost. I spoke with my wife, Polly, about it and she said that wasn’t the way we did business.”
Then, during a morning devotional, he said the Lord put this idea in his head: If you are going to charge for water, then you have to give it away.
That notion blended with the fact that water quality issues are a huge problem in much of the developing world. Charge 25 cents for a glass of water, but use the money to help others.
The idea for the name of the organization came to Johns by way of the wedding in Cana, where Jesus performed his first miracle, turning water into wine.
John 2:6-10, states: “Jesus ordered the servants to fill the empty containers with water and to draw out some and take it to the chief waiter. After tasting the water that had become wine, and not knowing what Jesus had done, he (the chief waiter) remarked to the bridegroom that he had departed from the custom of serving the best wine first by serving it last.”
To Johns, the similarity is obvious.
“This (water purification) would be like transforming bad water (into) the best wine,” he said.
Providing clean water could have a huge impact for millions of people, according to Johns. Every 15 seconds a child dies from a water-related illness. And 84 percent of all deaths from water-related illness are among children under 14 years old.
“If you don’t have water, you can’t live,” he said. “The most basic and fundamental part of life is water.
“We (hope to) use a network of restaurants across the nation to make the dining public aware of this problem.”
By forming the federally approved 501(c) 3 non-profit organization, Johns hopes to create a community with restaurants across the state and eventually across the country.
Should 25 percent of the nation’s 750,000 restaurants take part and collect an average of $50 a day, the effort could produce nearly $3.5 billion annually, according to Johns.
Funds raised could be used to improve water quality in several ways, he points out. These include providing water purification packets that turn contaminated water into drinking water, using bio-filters and sand filters and improving traditional wells by sealing them and installing pumps. The cost to install a well is between $16,000 and $18,000.
Johns said that as the project goes forward, the NGOs would oversee distribution of funds by partnering with the local villages.
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Hannah wrote on Feb 8, 2010 10:58 AM: