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Pat Boone is gathering musicians to sing for a cause—to bring water to Tanzania.
His new song, “ONE—Voices for Tanzania,” features Vince Gill, Alabama, Lee Greenwood, Larry Gatlin, Pam Tillis, Deborah Allen, Billy Dean, Wendy Moten and others. The project’s earnings will help provide clean water, food, health services and education in Tanzania.
“This is the most important thing I have ever done,” Boone, 90, told Main Street Nashville. “The life expectancy of a child born in the wild in Tanzania is five years. But the water is poisoned everywhere.
“Clean water, basic primary and secondary schools, and even small medical clinics are literally life-changing developments,” Boone said.
Ten years ago, Boone began to help build wells with God TV.
Boone recalled when they sought Tanzanian government assistance to install a 500-foot well with a windmill.
The government said, “Look, we are not Christian, but we know you are. But if you put in a well, we will give you the 200 acres around it, but don’t call it a church.”
So they created the “Boone Life Center,” to teach Tanzanians how to farm and have a healthy diet.
“We now have the Israeli irrigation system creating not just a garden, but a whole Shirley Boone vegetable farm in that part of Tanzania out of raw, dry land. Once you bring water to it, it can flourish,” he said.
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For ONE, Boone incorporated a choir group, Nashville’s Legacy Mission Village Singers, in the song. The group is made up completely of Tanzanian and Congolese refugees.
Boone said, “There is a choir here in Nashville, and they sing gospel songs in Swahili. When you hear them singing on the record, it’s really spine-tingling because they are singing the words I wrote, but in their language, Swahili. We were already in the process of recording the song when we found out about them.
“When I wrote this song, it didn’t have anything to do with water,” Boone said. “But then the folks heard it, and now that people are helping to fund things. I realized this was a song that could inspire others and hopefully raise money to create more freshwater wells.”
There are plans for bonus content to follow the song’s release. The content will include a DVD/Blu-ray containing the “Official Music Video,” a behind-the-scenes “Making Of” documentary, artist interviews, footage from affected African villages, and a 12-page photo book that shows how Boone’s project is changing lives.
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