By Crystal McGough, Associate Editor
TRUSSVILLE – Local nonprofit Designs for Hope executive director Chris Bond was doing a project to help bring clean water to communities in Kenya in February 2020 when inspiration hit.
Photo by Chris Bond
About 50 miles from where Bond was working stood Mt. Kilimanjaro, the tallest freestanding mountain in the world, standing at 5,895 meters – over 19,000 feet – tall.
“Every day, I could see Mt. Kilimanjaro in the background, and I thought to myself, I’d love to climb that mountain,” Bond said. “I’ve always wanted to do that.”
Then, Bond had an idea to get a team together to climb the mountain in order to raise awareness for the needs of people in Africa, specifically the need for clean water.
Before long, Bond had formed a team of eight, including three people from Trussville, two from Africa, and others from Pennsylvania and Seattle, who will be climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in October 2023.
“The climb is kind of a catch to get people excited about changing the world, especially when it comes to clean water and water scarcity and water poverty across the world,” Bond said. “The more people who are aware of the needs and challenges, in terms of clean water and other needs, the more people know, the more people can get behind or support making a difference in the world.”
Each climber is tasked to share about the work Designs for Hope is doing internationally and invite others to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
(https://www.designsforhope.org/)
As a way to raise awareness and also raise funds for clean water projects, the team is gathering at Cahaba Elementary on Saturday, April 22, at 5 a.m., to hold a “Burpee Challenge” fundraiser.
“We’re trying to raise a lot of money for projects, water projects specifically,” Bond said. “We’re doing one burpee for every meter tall that the mountain is, so we’re doing 5,895 burpees in order to raise money. What we’re asking, if people are interested, is to donate one cent for every burpee that we do as a team. If they want to be a part, they can sponsor our burpees and that money will go directly towards water projects.”
Bond said that the team members are each planning to do 100 burpees per hour for eight hours.
“Each person is tasked to do about 800 burpees,” he said. “It’s just a fundraiser and a fun way to get people excited and involved in doing something that’s hard and challenging.”
Designs for Hope is a parachurch organization ministry that was founded in Trussville in July 2011. With a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, Bond said he felt called to put his professional skillset to use serving God.
“I felt the call into international missions and as I was exploring that, the Lord just basically said, ‘Use your skills and talents to serve Me.’ So, putting the two together, we created the ministry,” he said. “We use engineering skillsets to provide for the spiritual and physical needs of churches and ministries and missional organizations in third world countries. We work with local North American churches as well as different denominations both locally and internationally.”
To learn more about Designs for Hope, or to sign up to sponsor the Kilimanjaro Burpee Challenge, please visit designsforhope.org.
