Whitworth Alumna Serves as Director for Blood:Water Mission to Fight AIDS Pandemic in Africa
By Hannah Fischer

The first time Jena Lee, '04, walked into an AIDS clinic in Africa, she knew she'd never forget what she saw. Among other patients, a sick child less than two years old lay dying. She tried to make him laugh, but he was too weak to smile. His mother had recently died of AIDS, and he was expected to live only a week.

Lee was a senior in college, traveling across South Africa on a Jan Term study program when she first saw the devastating effects of poverty and the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa.

Two years later, she is on her way back to Africa. Instead of going with a group of students and professors, she travels by herself. Lee travels to Africa several times a year as the executive director of Blood:Water Mission, a nonprofit organization founded by the members of the Christian band Jars of Clay to fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa.

AIDS has killed millions in sub-Saharan Africa, and an estimated 25.8 million live with HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS reported in December 2005. That year alone, 3.2 million people were newly infected.

Millions of people in Africa do not have access to clean water, a necessity for sustaining communities and improving health.

"I don't need to see the millions. One is too many," Lee said.

Lee became the executive director of Blood:Water Mission the spring before she graduated after connecting with Jars of Clay while the band was on the campus for a concert.

Blood:Water Mission partners with African communities and other organizations to build wells in rural villages that don't have access to clean water. But building wells is only part of their mission. They also build awareness of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, reaching out specifically to churches and young people. One danger, Lee admits, is for Westerners to label Africans as victims and to see them as a cause, rather than as individuals.

"We're naturally going to be completely wracked by what poverty does to a continent," Lee said, "but we're not called to be the saviors or the Messiahs in these places; we're to be the brothers and sisters. You have to be very intentional."

Over the past two years, Blood:Water Mission has gone from being a vision planted in the hearts of four musicians and a college senior, to dramatically improving thousands of lives in the name of Jesus Christ. They already have 58 well projects that are either completed or in progress and that have had an impact upon an estimated 120,000 people through their construction.

Building a nonprofit from the ground up is frustrating and even messy, and Lee will admit she has made lots of mistakes in the past few years. Lee said she sometimes wanted to quit in the beginning of establishing Blood:Water Mission, but she had a commitment to see it through. Looking back on her experience at Whitworth and the transition into life afterward, she credits the school with giving her the commitment to live out her convictions and integrate faith with action.

Lee began college as a nursing major because she wanted a career that would help people, she said. She first learned how harmful the HIV virus is in a medical microbiology class.

"Just as HIV/AIDS attacks the weakest parts of our body, it also attacks the weakest parts of our society," Lee said.

She collected newspaper clippings on the virus and listened to HIV-positive people who came to share their stories with her class, all the time becoming increasingly concerned about the deadly virus.

Lee participated in the Murdock Lives of Commitment Program, directed by Professor Julia Stronks. The program began in 2000 and was designed to enable Whitworth students to connect their worldview beliefs with their lifestyle choices both during and after college. Being with other students in college who shared the same passion for justice and connecting their beliefs with action was most significant in helping her live out her own convictions.

In Lee's sophomore year, Julia Stronks told her she would make a fantastic political-science major.

"I thought she was crazy," Lee admits.

But her professor and mentor could see Lee's potential and Lee soon changed her major.

"Julia continued to pour her faith in me for two-and-a-half years," she said.

During these years, Lee volunteered with Cup of Cool Water and Christ Kitchen, two outreach ministries to the Spokane community.

"Those were great opportunities to learn about ministry and nonprofits and how to accomplish a lot on little amounts of money," she said.

Lee also took advantage of the hands-on experience of Jan Term study programs, going on a Spanish immersion trip to Mexico, seeing Prejudice across America, and then South Africa her senior year.

"Jan Term trips were incredible because they were able to take all the head knowledge and let you live it out and let you taste it and smell it," Lee said.

When talking about her passion for social justice and her work in Africa now, she says she gets overwhelmed at the need. However her commitment to Blood:Water Mission is tied to her convictions about justice and she cannot easily walk away from those beliefs.

"What I hope that people would understand is the underlying commitment and reason for why I do what I do. That's what Whitworth fostered in me," Lee said. "There are plenty of schools that could give me the exact same skills in order to start a nonprofit and run it, but Whitworth really focused on the heart, on the faith and that side of commitment."