Water of life: Salvos project aims to change lives for the better

THE Bellarine Peninsula Salvos has launched its own line of canned still water to help raise funds for its local community development work.

The “Life to the Full” still water was released to the public just two weeks ago and has received a great response, with more than 10 local businesses already jumping on board to support the cause.

Bellarine Salvos Captain Peter Hobbs said businesses and people buying the water were investing in seeing lives changed for the better.

“We have our thrift shops as our main source of income but we want to expand our team of experienced community development practitioners on the ground, because what we’ve seen is that the way we operate, by being holistic and wrapping around families, is so effective that we wanted to be able to replicate what we do by raising more leaders,” Capt. Hobbs said.

“After we looked at our budgets and saw it was going to be a stretch, we needed to look for other income streams.”

Capt. Hobbs said the idea took off after businesses and people the Salvos had been journeying with put their hands up to help.

“So we have a group of people we’ve been journeying with and one is Tim Page-Walker and his family who have a company Drink X in South Geelong,” he said.

“I have another friend, Paul Spence, who is a spiritual director, so like a clinical supervisor, and I said to them that we need to discover a new income stream and they were like ‘have you tried this?’.

“One of our chaplains, CJ Teuma is an artist and she came up with the concept design and Paul came up with the name ‘Life to the Full’.

“This is what we are about, so we got together and the labels were printed and now they have been produced.”

Capt. Hobbs said The Bungalow Restaurant was the first business to start selling the water to its customers and the coffee van The Divine Grind, among a list of other cafes.

The Salvos also donated more than 240 cans for players taking part in the first annual Ryan Gatgens Memorial Golf Day at Clifton Springs Golf Course.

“Realistically, we are just starting, so we want to see anyone who is interested and wants to invest in seeing lives changed for the better, and know that the money is actually going to the community and not being put into a special taskforce or program, it’s actually being put into people who are journeying alongside people,” he said.

“It’s always a challenge raising money for people on the ground, but we aim to raise up more community development practitioners long-term.

“We know what works and we want to keep working on that.”

Support the Bellarine Peninsula Salvos by purchasing a case of water through salvosstores.com.au (search Life to the Full water).

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