Thursday, April 28, 2011

Bay West T-shirts - a RADICAL piece of clothing to own

This Sunday, we'll start selling the Bay West T-shirts that I've been putting on Facebook and Twitter and that Randy and I wore to Church in the Park on Palm Sunday.  These T-shirts won't just be a normal buy and be a walking ad for Bay West, they have a larger purpose.


We are in the process of working with Viera Water Network, a year old ministry based up in Viera, that goes to under-resourced countries to build safe water pumps and safe water systems for people.  Over 1.4 billion children die each year from preventable diseases caused by unsafe drinking water...that works out to 4,000 deaths per day or 1 every two seconds...that's two children alone that have died from a preventable disease due to drinking unsafe water since you began reading this blogpost.


FBC is forming a partnership with VWN and we will be sending a team to community that we have partnered with in Nicaragua in July.  We hope to be able to see VWN repair two water supply areas there in the community and my hope for these T-shirts is that the sale of them will pay for at least 1 of the repairs.  I hope to be having Daniel from Viera Water Network in to Bay West to give us a better picture of what they are doing and the ministry they are a part of.


We will be selling the T-shirts for a minimum price of $15 per shirt...we have made a decision NOT to recoup the cost of the T-shirts and send ALL money given to the shirts to this project.  Due to our commitment to the Radical Experiment, we'll make adjustments in our campus budget to make up for the production costs of the T-shirts and any future T-shirt orders for this project, so we can give ALL of the $15 price to the project in Nicaragua.


Why minimum price?  We chose this term because we know that some of you will probably want to give more to this project, so anything above $15 given to each shirt will go to the project as well.


Why $15?  We have 100 shirts and the average cost of a well repair is $1500...our hope is to pay for one at least and possibly pay for another or have money to put toward another.


We have regular T-shirts, soft cloth (blue, tan, black) and some "Junior Cut Ladies" Tees (Pink/black writing & black/white writing) as well.