Casting Crowns play to sell out venues in UK and Europe

|PIC1|Grammy-award winning US Christian band, Casting Crowns, played to over 3,000 fans at the Odyssey Arena on Friday before going on to play to a sold-out venue at the Queen's Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent on Saturday.

The UK concerts are part of their 20-date tour across Europe and the US in the run-up to Christmas.

Casting Crowns chose to partner with World Vision for their two UK dates as long-term supporters of the Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation.

Having travelled to India and Kenya as part of World Vision's artist ambassadors' programme, Casting Crowns saw the impact of poverty firsthand and the difference that committed support can make. The band takes the opportunity in their concerts to share stories of their trips, and what it means for them to follow Christ in an unequal world.

Mark Hall, lead singer, travelled to Northern India in 2006. He saw how people in rural communities travelled miles to collect rainwater from muddy pools to drink.

"If the water was here it would change everything," he said. "The women and children spend most of their time walking to find water. That's all they do, it's their life. If water was here the kids could go to school, they could learn a trade and then go on to support their own families."

Women and girls can spend up to seven hours a day trekking for water that often isn't fit to drink. Drinking dirty water exposes them and their families to life-threatening diseases like malaria, cholera, dysentery and typhoid. Every year, 2.2 million children die of water-related diseases.

Visiting a World Vision 'area development programme' near Rajasthan, funded
by child sponsorship, Mark saw the big impact a small change can make. The money raised by child sponsors helped build new wells in the village, giving the community easy access to clean, drinking water.

Mark says, "The exciting thing for me is that we're making a difference. The more children that are sponsored, the more difference it makes to the community."

Matt Wenham from World Vision UK explains, "Simple measures, like clean water and sanitation in a village, can cut child mortality by a half. By sponsoring a child, people in the UK are literally helping to save lives and change the world that child grows up in."