Globe Printers Help
Many Live Out their Dreams
It is not very often one gets to fulfill a dream. Globe Printers is proud to have had part in a local man’s dream of bringing clean water to a remote village in Africa, thus fulfilling the villager’s dream of living daily with safe water.
In August of 2007, Ken Baerg met his friend Randall Mark for coffee and a chat about dream. Both avid runners, Baerg explained his plan to pioneer a quality 5K, 10K and half marathon in Abbotsford, B.C., Canada to raise funds for Hope International, a non-profit organization established in 1975 to help impoverished people around the world with essential life necessities.
The specific project that had captured Baerg included enabling villages in Africa to tap into fresh water. Discovery Channel had recently held a clean water challenge in North America, and the two friends’ hometown was found to have some of the cleanest water around.
“There are a myriad of worthy causes,” Baerg explains. “However, without the fundamentals - clean water, food and shelter, there is no hope to pull out of the cycle of poverty and premature death for many of these people. Access to water is foundational to health and the ability to start to become economically sustainable. Plus, the fact we have the cleanest water on the planet made the connection to bring water to others even stronger.”
It didn’t take a lot of convincing for Mark to buy into Baerg’s dream. Mark has spent some time in Africa as a child and the people had, “been tattooed on my heart.”
The two men surrounded themselves with other friends and pulled together Abbotsford’s first Run For Water, which was a huge success. On June 1, 2008, over 700 runners and walkers participated and in excess of $25,000 was raised. Globe Printers was a big part of the success.
"We have come to realize that marketing and promoting an event like ours takes considerable energy and funds and can only happen when local businesses give of their expertise and resources,” Baerg explains. “Globe Printers has been amazingly generous by providing our event with a huge volume and a wide range of high quality printed promotional pieces. And it's clear that they do it because they care about the cause - clean water for people in desperate need. Without these sorts of partnerships the fundraising capacity of an event like ours would be seriously limited."
“We had bouncy castles, face painters, balloon artists and a concert from Greg Neufeld, a local Canadian Idol finalist, all around Mill Lake Park. It was a phenomenal family day that pulled together our community. We are committed to making this annual event one of the premier running races in British Columbia,” Mark shares. “We could not pull it together without the help of our sponsors, especially Globe Printers, who hs generously provided all of our posters, placards, brochures and more. We could not get the word out about our run without their cooperation.”
Much to their surprise, the executive director of Hope International invited the two friends to accompany him to see the end result of the funds raised when a water system would be complete in Amedo in early December. Mark and Baerg travelled by plane and four by four trucks over improbable mountainous dirt roads for three days from Abbotsford. When they finally got to Amedo, they found a crew of Ethiopians had already spent three months digging and entrenching five-inch pipe to connect a plentiful and pure mountainous spring. The easily maintained water system will supply the village of about 1000 people with clean water for the rest of their lives.
“I asked a little girl, Temeka, how the water system would change her life,” Mark shares. “She smiled an amazing smile and immediately cheered, ‘I can go to school!’” Previous to the tap, girls as young as nine years old were responsible to make the daily 20 kilometer trek up and down the mountain to the spring to bring water to their families.
“The mountain Temeka lives on is 12,100 feet above sea level,” Mark, an avid runner, explains. “This is 2000 feet higher than our Mt. Baker. I was winded after hiking a short distance, so the daily stress put on these young girls is enormous.”
After talking about school Mark and Bearg saw Temeka suddenly drop her head and say something else in her unique dialect. The translator hesitated, and then explained Temeka was ashamed.
Through emotion, Mark continues, “She had said, ‘Tell him I’m happy because I don’t have to go into the woods anymore so I won’t get raped again.’ The look in Temeka’s big brown eyes was of shear terror.” The translator explained men from nearby villages would often wait for the girls as they made their daily hike and then take advantage of them. Living without police or military, these girls were forced to take this plight everyday, even with their families knowing about the possibility of rape, molestation, and even kidnapping. Their situation is so dire that the girls had to keep making these hikes for water.
The final impact of Hope International’s work in these villages suddenly became more than just water. Both fathers of young daughters, Mark and Bearg could not imagine a ten-year-old girl having to endure terror like this day after day.
The Run for Water in Abbotsford will continue to be a yearly event to ensure more funding can help more people, especially young girls, in this remote region of Ethiopia. To find out how you can volunteer, donate or run in the 2009 Run for Water on May 31, go to www.runforwater.ca.
