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Rural Empowerment Initiatives (REI) mission is to collaborate in the reduction of poverty through investment in rural areas and training of local people.

Vision Statement
REI's vision is to treat every created being with dignity, respect and love. We strive to work with those most in need by empowering people to recognize their God given talents, enabling them to make the world a better place and providing them hope for the future.

Our Principles
REI believes that all people are created equal.
REI will develop small to medium businesses (SMEs) as one approach to reach those most in need by creating jobs that build the economy in rural areas.
REI's partner businesses will be led, managed and majority owned by local people.
REI will always seek a triple bottom line of economic, spiritual and social transformation.
REI seeks to build sustainable community-oriented business models.
REI's focus of support is to the economically disadvantaged.
REI will seek attractive market and growth opportunities.
REI will incubate pilot projects with capable management.
REI believes in collaboration. We seek partners whose strengths complement our own in an effort to build well-rounded projects of lasting economic value for the communities in which we work.
REI is inspired by the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, and is therefore rooted in the Christian faith.

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Living Water International


We started our trek in heavy snow late Thursday night and we ended up in Houston early Friday morning with bright sunshine and warm temps. That felt so good for a northerner like myself.
David Colwin joined me as we are venturing into what we believe could provide transformational development for hundreds of villages in rural Senegal in the years to come.
We arrived at Living Water at about 10:30 am and we left exhausted from all the info and the excitement of the day at 4 pm.
We met our contact at Living Water International (LWI), Brad Salzman when we arrived. Brad is one of four vice presidents at Living Water. We soon realized how passionate Brad was about his role and his love for providing a cup of clean water in Jesus name.Brad is the leader of the pump repair program at LWI. LWI repaired over 300 pumps in 2007 and has a lofty goal of repairing 1000 pumps in 2008.
Dave and I really resonated with Brad and LWI's approach.
Simple.
Sustainable.
Community involvement.
Spiritual connection.

Brad will be joining us as a consultant in Senegal in March. We look forward as we will be the 'spies' and survey the land and we look forward to the report we will give you in April. I feel something big here. Like the spies returning from the promised land ,we envision of helping thousands of rural Senegalese in the years to come...

stay tuned.
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous31 January, 2008 20:11

    Beautiful!

    We're quickly expanding our own work on clean water projects in Kenya. We're working hard to connect God's people here with his children in Africa. We sincerely believe that connecting real people to real people (from here to there) can have an enormous impact! It's more than just giving to a cause. That's why LWI's community involvement is so important.

    Building relationships while bringing a cup of cold water is the gospel as Jesus intended. Don't ya think?

    Check us out and perhaps we can connect. TheWaterProject.org

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