|PIC1|A US-based Christian rock band recently joined forces with organisation African Leadership to raise funds for relief efforts in Darfur, Sudan.

Sanctus Real will work through the organisation’s Mocha Club missions work, providing aid to the war-torn nation.

In the last two years, more than 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur and more than two million people have been displaced.

Future efforts will lend support for an orphanage in Kenya where babies have been abandoned due to AIDS, building a school for 380 children in the Sudan, building a village for and rehabilitating young women who were former sex slaves under the Rebel forces in Northern Uganda, funding an orphanage for 134 street children in Kampala, Uganda and building a school amidst the largest slum in East Africa for 400 children in Kibera, Kenya.

“In every way that we can, we’re to give back what God’s given us,” says Sanctus Real front man Matt Hammitt. “As a band, we were looking for an organisation that wasn’t trying to pay artists to help. We just wanted to help because we believe in something. With African Leadership, we found a team of people that has really fast, effective ways of getting relief to the people where they need it—like in Darfur where there is a civil war going on and tens of thousands of people are being brutally murdered. People are fleeing to the hills and just don’t have the resources to survive. Little dollars are providing big necessities for these people.”

“The music of Sanctus Real challenges us to be more honest, to live with integrity in our relationship with God and the people around us,” says Larry Warren, African Leadership president. “Now they are pointing the way to demonstrate authentic care in more difficult places, far away, like Darfur, Sudan. When Matt [Hammitt] tells their audience how to save a life for $5 (£ 2.50) to $10 (£ 5) by providing food and medicine, delivered by African Leadership, and their newly formed Mocha club, then this band is blessing the people of Sudan and the audience who wants to live with the integrity Sanctus Real sings about. I am blessed to know these guys whose attitude is, ‘we will keep speaking out for those in need, as long as there is a need.’”

|AD|African Leadership’s Mocha Club is a sponsorship programme where for the cost of two mocha coffee drinks per month, people and organisations lend their support to provide a solution to the challenges Africans are facing every day. Individuals who sign up for sponsorship through Sanctus Real will also receive a copy of the band’s current, best-selling CD, The Face of Love.

African Leadership is an organisation striving to make a difference by providing HOPE, one leader...one family...one child at a time. They are currently discipling nearly 10,000 pastors and church leaders in 27 African nations. Classrooms range from “under a tree” in the war torn-corners of Sudan to the most densely populated slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Also, through their mission to meet the physical needs of Africans, their leadership network offers life-sustaining Hope to those that God calls "the least" of His children.

More information on African Leadership and the Mocha Club can be found at www.AfricanLeadership.org and www.mochaclub.org.