President Darrel and Christy Colson have joined other Lutheran college and university presidents to fund construction of a water well in Ethiopia.

“Our purpose is to undertake a worthwhile mission project together and inspire our own students in the process,” said Wayne Powell, president of Lenoir-Rhyne University and chair of the Lutheran Educational Conference of North America, an association of 40 Lutheran colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.

“All of our campuses stress service learning, and we are always driven to find ways to engage our students both in global concerns and ways to live out our faith in service to others,” Powell said.

Last year the presidents voted to promote water projects through Water to Thrive, a nonprofit, faith-based organization that grew out of a Lutheran Sunday School class focused on the critical need for clean water worldwide. A Wartburg College alumnus, Ed Scharlau of Austin, Texas, is one of the W2T founders. In just five years, the organization has funded 300 water projects, bringing clean water to more than 150,000 people.

LECNA is partnering with W2T to implement a water project for the Ethiopian village of Wana, which has never had safe water.

Students at Concordia University Texas, Texas Lutheran, Concordia University Irvine (Calif.) and Wartburg have already undertaken projects to construct wells in Ethiopia. The hope is that more student groups will follow their presidents’ lead.