  1,000 Schools...and Beyond
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 1,000 Schools...and Beyond
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 ROB BELL, EL PORVENIR Imagine being a child sitting in a sweltering classroom in Nicaragua and being thirsty. The only way to get a drink of water is to dig a small hole in a nearby riverbed and dip your glass into the seeping pool of tepid, dirty water. During the rainy season you wouldn’t be much better off finding a safe drink of water either—the river does return then but the water is contaminated with animal and human feces. This had been the reality for students of the Rafael Herrera School in San Lorenzo, Nicaragua—a remote rural region. This two-room school, the only one in the community, accommodates 54 students from preschool to the sixth grade. A teacher recalled that “children got diarrhea and were vomiting because the water was contaminated.” Some of the children were so sick they had to go to the hospital; several students missed up to two weeks of school. To address this situation, the water NGO El Porvenir (www.elporvenir.org) rehabilitated an unusable well at the school, added a rope pump and constructed a protective slab to protect the well water from contamination. The school pays an affordable monthly fee for the project’s maintenance. Quenching the students’ thirst had not been the only water-related problem for this Nicaraguan school. To address this intersection between water and health, El Porvenir conducts hygiene training with students and teachers to emphasize the need to wash hands and properly store water to avoid water-borne illnesses. The teacher reflected on the project’s effect, “We have seen changes in the community and the school…. Now the students can go to class everyday.” No longer do they have to go the river or the neighbors’ homes to get a drink of water. Nine-year- old Francisca agreed, “We feel very grateful because now we don’t get sick.” While access to safe drinking water and hygiene education has improved students’ health, only part of the problem has been solved. For this reason, this year El Porvenir and the community are replacing the outdated and unsafe latrines—the other key component to improving health and hygiene for students and teachers.
 IMAGE COURTESY OF WEDC. © JONATHAN ROUSE “Wonderful Watery World” is the title of a song written and sung by students from Summit School in North Carolina. These students not only sang about water, but they also successfully raised $6,300—almost $1,000 over their goal—for a school without water and sanitation in Kenya. Summit School, along with 110 other U.S. schools, joined H2O for Life, a nonprofit organization committed to helping U.S. schools extend clean drinking water and sanitation to schools overseas through service learning projects. (http://summit.nc.schoolwebpages.com/education/school/ A valuable part of the H2O for Life program (www.h2oforlifeschools.org) is simply learning about the hardships that students in developing countries endure because of the lack of safe drinking water, latrines and handwashing. How this need relates to poverty around the world particularly resonated with students at Washington, D.C.’s Oyster Adams Bilingual School. “I learned there was no clean water in many parts of the world, not just Africa,” explained Margueritte Harris, a student at Oyster-Adams School which has committed to raise $2,565 for a school in Bolivia. Exchanging pen pal letters and sharing photos helped U.S. students grasp that there are real children and stories behind the abstract and daunting statistics. This galvanized students into action, empowering rather than discouraging them. Seventh grader David McGough of White Bear Lake, Minnesota’s Centennial Middle School said, “I didn’t worry and no one else cared about the problem before, but now it seems super important to get the kids water.”  KATHY FLETCHER The physical burden that children bear when they walk far distances to access water has been a major learning moment for students at Centennial Middle School. Seventh grader Tasha Erding commented, “It was amazing how far they had to walk, and they didn’t have the opportunity to go to school or get fresh water.” To experience this burden firsthand, hundreds of students participated in a “water walk” fundraising event where they carried heavy buckets of water. Centennial Middle School has committed to raise $9,565 for its partner schools in Bangladesh, Bolivia and Nicaragua. A “water walk” was one of many creative fundraisers that over a hundred schools across the U.S. undertook to raise money for partner schools in developing countries. Students worked hard to create fun and engaging activities, including hat days, art shows, wishing wells and t-shirt sales. The momentum is building and many of these schools are going beyond H2O for Life Clubs and are including the whole school body in their water education and fundraising activities. For the 2009 -10 school year, H2O for Life plans to match 250 U.S. schools with schools overseas. If there’s one thing demonstrated by these students, it perhaps can be summed up by the remarks of Seamus Lynch at Oyster-Adams School, “You can help kids your own age.”
 © GARY WHITE, WATER.ORG Funding for WASH-in-Schools has become a key part of annual giving by several large U.S. corporations. The Coca-Cola Company and ITT, for example, are partnering with NGOs to expand the reach of WASH-in-Schools in developing countries. The Coca-Cola Company, through The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, is working throughout the African continent on WASH projects in schools in support of local government policies and community-identified needs. According to the Company's latest Community Water Partnerships Report, since 2005 over 230 African schools in at least six countries are recipients of a WASH package. The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation plans to expand its efforts to more schools and will be actively cultivating new relationships with governments and NGOs to make this happen. More about The Coca-Cola Company’s work in community water projects can be found at (http://www.thecoca-cola ITT, through its philanthropic arm Watermark (www.ittwatermark.com), partnered with Water For People (WFP) (www.waterforpeople.org) to expand WFP’s WASH-in-Schools program in India, Guatemala and Honduras. The program reached 35,000 students in 52 schools in 2008 and is projected to more than double that number of students and schools in 2009. The positive impacts have already been experienced by Pampa Sarkar and her fellow students at Balia High School in West Bengal, India. Water For People installed a filter to remove arsenic from the drinking water, a motorized pump to deliver water faster, drinking fountains and new bathrooms and implemented hygiene education. Without clean water Pampa Sarkar, like many of her friends and family members, had experienced constant digestive pains and other health problems. “Gastrointestinal problems were rampant for us,” she says. As a result, she was missing school regularly. Because of these upgrades in the school facilities and hygiene education, the health of students has improved. Pampa Sarkar and other students are part of a water and sanitation awareness group that takes the safe water and sanitation message to the community and to nearby schools where students are still drinking contaminated water. “Access to clean water is vital for my daughter,” says Pampa’s mother, Parbati Sarkar. “She is going to have a career and be a future mother, and her good health is the most important thing in making this happen. I feel our family has now been blessed with safe water.”
Where We Go From Here:
A Note from Water Advocates’ WASH-in-Schools Program Director |
