This Sunday, May 5, is PALS -- and everyone is invited to join us (not just the PALS group that typically meets on the third Sunday of the month).
Marion Medical Mission (MMM) volunteer and one of Faith Des Peres' very own -- Alisa Simpson -- will join us at 9:30 a.m. in the Gathering Space to talk about MMM's well program that provides a sustainable source of safe drinking water for African people in Northern and Central Malawi and Southern and Eastern Tanzania. Alisa has been to Africa with MMM twice, so we will get to hear some of her experiences first-hand.
MMM is a volunteer non-profit organization that establishes partnerships with Africans at the grassroots level. People in the villages dig the wells, make the bricks to line them, and bring sand and stone needed for construction. MMM supplies what the villages cannot -- cement, pipe, skilled African labor and training. Each well costs $400 and is easy to maintain and repair.
According to estimates, over 14 million people in the rural areas of Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia do not have access to safe drinking water and 4,000 children worldwide die each day because of unsafe drinking water.