"Water Colors," from Excel Magazine

Excel Magazine, Spring 2008...
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"Water Colors"
How one student and a bunch of paintings are providing clean water for Africans

One-sixth of the world’s population does not have access to safe water—that’s 1.1 billion people. A child dies every 15 seconds from a water-related disease. Millions of people spend several hours each day walking just to get access to water, often from polluted sources.

Though many college students hear statistics like this, Ryan Groves actually decided to try to do something about them. As a freshman at Oklahoma Christian University, Groves, along with his brother, Brendan, started a ministry to help with the water crisis in Africa by building wells. They named the project Wishing Wells.

“There was just this incredible amount of apathy even though we went to a Christian school,” says Groves, who is now a junior majoring in Bible.

After a fairly slow first year, Groves and his classmate Whitney Parker had a vision to use student artwork to support the ministry. Wishing Wells started hosting art shows selling donated student artwork and using the money to build wells in Africa. Once they started the art shows, “God just took it,” Groves said. To date it has raised thousands of dollars and built two wells, with more on the way.

Groves and Parker emphasize that the art is not just a means to raise money, it is a way of changing peoples’ attitudes and hearts in America as well. “I think art is such a powerful medium to convey ideas and messages and emotions,” says Parker, a senior majoring in graphic design. “Our goal is to use art to get people to connect with what’s going on around the world.”
Parker is one of a cadre of 40 or 50 student artists ready and willing to donate paintings for Wishing Wells’ shows.

“My favorite part is that I have an outlet for the things I love to do to really make a difference,” says Parker. “It’s not just going to school or making a pretty picture, it’s more than that.”

Why Wells?
Wishing Wells uses the money it earns from the art shows and other fundraisers to support missionaries who are already building wells in places like Africa.

“When we’re picking out who we build the wells with, we really put a scope on them,” Groves says, emphasizing the need to find people who do things the right way.

According to Groves, just building the wells and leaving doesn’t do the job. Villagers have to learn how to use the well properly and the basics of hygiene, which many of them have never been taught. Without having learned about sanitation, many will use the same bucket for their drinking water and waste.

In addition, ministries have to maintain the wells they’ve already built. Typically when a well breaks it’s only a matter of a few dollars to fix it, but often it never gets done.

That’s why Wishing Wells chooses people like John Ed Clark, a “pretty righteous old dude,” in Groves’ words. Clark has been building wells in Africa for 40 years. He works with locals to build the them because there’s often a negative stigma if something is built by foreigners.

To date, Wishing Wells has funded wells in Kenya and Gambia with two more on the way to villages in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.

These simple projects can have a huge effect on their villages, as more than 80% of illnesses are connected to unclean water. Clean water is also a key in developing the local agriculture and economy as well.

Campus Atmosphere
Groves says the response from the student body at Oklahoma Christian has been tremendous, and he’s hoping to spread Wishing Wells to even more campuses. Students at six other schools have expressed serious interest in starting another chapter of the ministry.

With all this time spent working on Wishing Wells, sometimes Groves says it’s really hard to keep up with the other aspects of his life—like his grades. But he says his professors are a very understanding bunch.

“It’s been cool to see that your professors and other people around you in the school get excited about the same thing,” he says. “This is kind of why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

That’s the way Curt Niccum views it. Niccum teaches New Testament studies at Oklahoma Christian and has helped Groves and his team with Wishing Wells. He says students are uniquely equipped to do things like this.

“One of the things I love about students is that they haven’t learned the appropriate boundaries,” says. “These kids don’t have any concept of proper hierarchies, which can be good, because they’re willing to talk to anybody.”

All of it started because one freshmen looked at the state of the world and decided to do something.

“Never be discouraged by thinking that you are just one person in a huge college. Yes, you’re in college, but your life doesn’t start after college, it starts now,” says Groves. “Always take that step forward in faith and go and do something, there’s nobody stopping you but yourself.”