Dancing for Africa campaign spreads from Q-C to world

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By Kay Luna | Friday, November 14, 2008 11:31 PM CST | () comments

Allie Corbin, left, and Lindsay Whalen, both seniors at Davenport Central High School, dance at Vander Veer Park in Davenport on Wednesday for a music video to support building wells in under-developed countries in Africa. (Andrew Link/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo

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They stood in a room in Africa, watching the dancing with tears streaming down their faces.

Glorious, soulful dancing.

Six months ago, the African women who had taken care of Zach and Tesi Klipsch’s new little son, 3-year-old Tariku, in an orphanage in Ethiopia were dancing in celebration of his adoption. And they were saying goodbye.

Tesi Klipsch remembers crying and dancing with the women, thinking about her son’s short life in his homeland. She prayed desperately that she could help him stay connected to his roots.

“I was thinking, ‘I cannot believe we are taking him from a culture this beautiful,’ ” she said.

Images of Africa remain seared in the couple’s minds and hearts since returning home to Buffalo, Iowa.

They keep thinking of seeing children Tariku’s age walking along cobbled roads for miles and miles, leading donkeys with buckets on their backs to the nearest wells to get their family’s daily water supply.

The couple and some of their friends and family decided to do something to help.

So they dance. They’re dancing for water.

Ripples across the world

Just a week ago, Tesi Klipsch, 26, along with her sister-in-law, 30-year-old Leslie Klipsch of Davenport, and their friend, 29-year-old Jody Landers of Muscatine, Iowa, officially launched, with the help of others, a new fundraising campaign: Water for Christmas.

Teaming up with a New York-based nonprofit organization called charity: water, the three are urging people to “swing the pendulum from consumerism to compassion” this holiday season, Klipsch said.

They are asking people through an online initiative to skip a present or two this Christmas and donate a few dollars to help the organization build wells in underdeveloped parts of the world, specifically Africa.

The average well costs about $5,000, but it can be less or more expensive depending on how far below ground the water is, the women said.

So, in an effort to create “ripples” across the world, they are passionate about asking people to donate a little or a lot — every cent counts — toward the cause, Leslie Klipsch said.

To raise awareness and make it fun, they also are asking people to take videos of themselves dancing for water and then post them online at dancingforwater.blogspot.com.

When people watch the videos, they are asked to contribute by clicking on the “donate” button. Viewers are then sent to a secure PayPal page where they can donate directly by credit card.

The effort has spread like wildfire. In fact, Nicky Yates of charity: water said she has never seen a more “viral” homegrown campaign to help her organization’s cause.

The big difference this time: A couple in New Zealand — Josh and Jill Felix, readers of Landers’ blog, or online diary — began a “Water for Christmas” group on Facebook, the worldwide social networking site.

That Web site, similar to the Quad-City Times own quadsville.com, allows people to create pages about their lives, post photos and videos, and connect with people all over the world.

That instantly gave their campaign huge visibility they never imagined, Leslie Klipsch said.

By Friday, just seven days since the Facebook group was created, it had more than 1,000 members.

And videos of people dancing all around the country — soon all over the world — keep trickling in, the sisters-in-law said.

Online challenge

The Water for Christmas Facebook group got Landers thinking. If everyone in that group gave $10 each Friday until Christmas, it would pay to build up to 14 wells in Africa.

And what if people gave more? What if people who aren’t on Facebook gave to the cause, too?

“I can only dream of what would happen,” she wrote on her blog at jodylanders.com.

Just a week after officially launching the campaign in the Quad-Cities, the effort has raised thousands of dollars, charity: water officials said, and donations keep coming.

But why charity: water?

The sisters-in-law and Landers speak highly of the nonprofit, which has donors that cover its operational costs. That means all its other fundraising efforts go toward drilling wells. The group also provides follow-up repair and maintenance training for people using the wells.

African connection

The three organizers of “Water for Christmas” have something in common besides their passion to solve the water crisis. They are adopting, or already have adopted, children from Africa.

Tesi and Zach Klipsch and Landers and her husband, Andrew — who have two youngsters from Africa — already are raising their adopted children. Leslie Klipsch and her husband, Jake, are on a waiting list for a daughter from Africa.

“After having been there, you can’t shake it,” Tesi Klipsch said. “We saw all these tiny little kids getting water for their families. That is literally unfathomable to me.

“They literally need this or they’re going to die,” she said. “Jody (Landers) and I were talking about the sacrifices our African kids’ parents did.

They gave us our children. We need to honor that sacrifice somehow.”

The mothers actually began their effort two months ago, launching their first fundraising effort to help orphaned children. Through their blogs, Tesi Klipsch and Landers raised $4,200 in one month for Doctors Without Borders, which used it to buy nutritional peanut paste to help starving African children.

The next month, they asked readers to buy backpacks — each filled with a toothbrush, pajamas and a toy — for foster children in Scott and Muscatine counties. They received 275 of them, which they handed over to area Iowa Department of Human Services offices, Tesi Klipsch said.

Now, they are focused on water.

Wave of change

Jill Felix, who helped create the Facebook page for the cause, said it came at a time when she was “searching for more ways to help people in a tangible way.

“God has blessed us so much as a family, and it breaks my heart to think that people are dying because they do not have clean water to drink. It makes me want to fight for them and give up whatever I can to help them.”

One recent day, a small group of Davenport Central High School students gathered at Vander Veer Botanical Park’s empty fountain with iPod headphones tucked into their ears.

The Klipsch sisters-in-law were there, too, with their kids and a video camera. At the count of three, the students — led by senior Allie Corbin — began dancing, laughing and running all around the fountain.

All for water.

“I cannot stop talking about it because it’s so doable,” Tesi Klipsch said, throwing her hands in the air with a big smile across her face. “People call me naïve, but I’d rather call me hopeful.”

ALSO ON THE WEB

Learn more about the Quad-City area-originated Water For Christmas fundraising campaign to build wells in Africa — and watch people do their own “rain dances” for the cause through YouTube videos posted online.

To read about the project and watch the dances, go to hotflawedmama.blogspot.com, farm-raised.blogspot.com and dancingforwater.blogspot.com

For more discussion about the effort and to buy related merchandise, go to jodyrlanders.com.

On the Landers site, click on “water” at the top of the page, where you can find lesson plans for teachers related to “Water for Christmas” logos for flIers, ideas for business-type cards and other tools.

To read more about the nonprofit organization that receives the funds, go to www.charitywater.org/pages/ waterforchristmas.

Kay Luna can be contacted at (563) 383-2323 or kluna@qctimes.com.