This year at YoungLives, we volunteers were encouraged to help the ministry by giving back financially through a “Passion Project”. These projects can be anything, from running a marathon to silent auctions, hairstyling, photography or a garage sale. We were excited about the fact that all proceeds that were raised by these passion projects would be 100% matched by a generous donor! This got everyone thinking about how they could help raise money for YoungLives.

My friend Cristen began researching details on doing a baby bottle “change drive” this  is a fundraiser where you hand out baby bottles and ask people to fill them with spare change. After researching this, Cristen got excited about it and asked me to help her. I agreed! What this entailed was buying blank baby bottles, putting a YoungLives label on them and an information slip inside the bottle. Once we were done prepping the bottles, it was time to hand them out. We made our first announcement at a life group, and everyone agreed to take a bottle and fill it with spare change. We were so excited! That next Sunday we announced the campaign at our church, we had ordered 240 bottles and we ran out that first Sunday, we were ecstatic! We ordered 150 more bottles on Monday morning and plan on giving them all away!

Now, you may be thinking, like I was,”how much money could baby bottles full of change possibly raise?” This is the exciting part, the average for one bottle of change is $23.00-$25.00.

That means that there is the potential of raising $6000.00 which becomes $12000.00 with our donor match!

I think that this is a great example of how the Lord increases our giving. Its amazing how a seemingly small thing can reap so much. The money that we raise with the baby bottles will be used to send our teen moms and babies to a week long summer camp where they will have an opportunity to meet Jesus. Lives could be changed with our change!

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 2 Corinthians 9:10.

-Laurie Bradley