Photo by Emily Ganus

University of Central Oklahoma student Stephanie Boone looks at student artworks displayed at Oklahoma Christian University Friday night. The art was part of a charity event to help raise funds and awareness for Wishing Well Water for the World, a student organization that aids in Africa's water crisis.

EDMOND – The problem: a lack of clean water across a continent plagued by poverty and disease. The solution: art.

The Wishing Well Project is a non-profit organization headquartered at Oklahoma Christian University. The group’s mission is to raise money to build clean water wells for African communities – a goal furthered by an art show and benefit concert Friday night on OCU’s campus.

Singer/songwriter Derek Webb, his wife Sandra McCracken and folk fan favorite Waterdeep performed as audience members browsed the walls of student-created African-themed art.

Organization volunteers carried water jugs rattling with the sound of loose change. Small white stickers next to each piece of art proclaimed the suggested donation to make a purchase, but Friday’s event was about more than raising money, said Ryan Groves, executive director of The Wishing Well Project.

“If your heart is changed, then money doesn’t matter so much,” Groves said. “Art speaks things that words don’t quite grasp.”

The student-led organization has depended on art since Groves’s brother founded The Wishing Well Project in 2006 at Pepperdine University. Proceeds raised have gone to build several wells in Africa. Since then, Groves has taken over the organization and traveled with a group of students to Rwanda to make a documentary film and witness the African water crisis firsthand.

“It’s the largest humanitarian crisis by far,” Groves said. “It’s not controversial like the AIDS crisis; it’s not sexy, [but] other than air, water is the biggest human need.”

Nashville-based musician Webb said it’s easy to take clean water for granted when it’s all around you.

Webb, who describes himself as a singer/songwriter/agitator, has attached himself to various social change projects over the years, but said the clean water mission is an especially effective one because of its narrow focus.

“I walked past probably 10 water fountains on my way in here,” Webb said. “People just don’t understand when you take clean water out of a community what it does to that community. It is completely basic, and that’s why it’s so important.”

For the typical African mother, getting water is a full-time chore, and with much of the available water mingling with animal feces and insect larvae, finding clean water is nearly impossible, Webb said.

“In many cases [she] has to commute 10 or 15 miles each way to get to the nearest water, and often that water is poison in the bodies of people whose immune systems are broken,” Webb said.

Webb’s job as an artist puts him in a unique position to bring awareness to issues of social injustice, he said.

“Most people are just trying to get by day to day and week to week and make money to take care of their families,” Webb said. “That’s why it’s the responsibility – maybe not of all artists, but of some artists – to kind of give people a starting point. We’ll distill [issues] for them and that maybe gets the conversation started.”

As the night progressed, there were several calls for donations, but art – the music, paintings and photography – was never forced from centerstage. As Groves said, the night wasn’t about money, but about changing hearts.

Esther Havens, a freelance photographer who traveled with Groves and his team to Rwanda, said her art is like a voice of expression. Earlier in the night, there was a person looking at her pictures, tears streaming down their face, she said.

“I can’t take a photograph that causes someone to cry,” Havens said. “It’s something beyond [me] – it’s art.”

Whatever a person’s gift – be it art or otherwise – it’s that person’s responsibility to use it, Webb said.

“The best use of those gifts is in caring for our neighbors and connecting to something bigger and beyond ourselves,” he said.