Ashley is a small parish of about 80 regular Mass-goers, but has a thriving youth group of 18 youth, almost all of whom are come to Mass every weekend. For the last two years the Ashley Youth Group have run the Water4all project, of which you may have joined us, by drinking only water and eating normally for three days.

Over the past two years over 17,000 people have joined with us and drank water for three days and it wasn't easy for most of us!! Thank you for your support. Your letters and words of encouragement have helped and spurred us on to continue to raise awareness that 1.2 billion people in the world have no clean water and that someone dies every three seconds from diseases due to unclean water.

The focus was on water

• first how the tsunami killed so many at Christmas 2004-2005, but also how lack of clean water is responsible for the deaths of so many, too.
• As one of the UN Millennium Targets is to half the number of people in the world who have no practical access to clean water by 2015 (presently about 1.2 billion) our youth chose to only drink water for three days leading up to the summit. They ate as normal, but the only drink they had was water.
• This is the Water4all project.
• With the help of our Archbishop, Vincent Nichols, we invite all the parishes and Catholic schools in the diocese to join in.

This year the G8 Summit is being held at Heiligendamm in Germany from the 3rd - 6th June. Now wait for it… what we are asking you and your parishioners to do this year is join with us on the 6th June, one day only to drink only water, eat normally and to pray for the success of this summit that important decisions are made to aid the plight of those people without clean water. We need you to join us in this act of solidarity as the 2015 millennium goals get nearer. It is more important than ever to show we want something done about this injustice.