Iraq high school students thank Bethel students for their new water filter.

They used to drink water contaminated with sewage bacteria, but now some Iraqi high schoolers in Najaf, Iraq, are swallowing with ease, thanks to several Bethel students.

World Challenge, a student group that promotes missions and biblical justice on Bethel’s campus, raised $1,100 during the 08-09 school year to donate and install a water filter at the Najaf high school.

“A project like this seemed like a very tangible way we as students could be involved with reconciliation process in Iraq,” says Maren Anderson ’09. “For years now, we have seen images of devastation in Iraq, and I think many of us have felt helpless. As Christians, this was an opportunity to take a stance for justice, inter-faith partnership, and living generously.”

The students first learned of the desperate need for water filtration systems in Iraq when the founder of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams came to speak in a reconciliation studies course at Bethel. In response, students raised funds through a Christmas Fair Trade Market, during which students sell products either certified as Fair Trade or acquired directly from the producer, and a campaign urging Bethel students and employees to give $1. Muslim Peacemaker Teams installed the filter in May.

“Through projects like this, God is moving students to real transformation—for their lives and for the lives of others in the world. They are not only becoming competent Christ-like activists and scholars, they are living out the biblical mandates to ‘love sacrificially’ and ‘do justice,’” says Associate Campus Pastor Matt Runion, who works with the World Challenge group.

“I think it was a successful project,” explains Bethel senior Elisabeth Geschiere, “not because of any individual student’s efforts, but because of the simple fact that a few more Iraqi students have clean water.”