Learning to walk a mile, or four, in another person’s shoes was the lesson at St. Ursula’s School in Chatham recently.
All of the students took part in the Water Walk, an event to make students aware of how far children in countries in places such as Africa have to go just to get water for drinking and cooking for their families to survive. Organizers Stephanie McCaffery-Lachine and Trisha Vanderenden, Grade 4-5 teachers, involved all the students to help them appreciate how accessible clean water is to us, and to empathize with those who don’t have that same privilege.
“Kids in Africa walk as far as four miles to a water source and four miles back and sometimes it’s not even clean water,” McCaffery-Lachine told the assembled students. “Some of these kids are as young as four years old.”
Reminding the students how fortunate we are to be able to turn on a tap and have clean water, Vanderenden said we all take water for granted and need to learn to use water more responsibly.
On hand during the event was Tim Sunderland, the general manager of the Chatham-Kent Public Utilities Commission (PUC). He gave a brief talk to the students on how the municipality treats its water to make it clean again. He also explained the importance of being part of water conservation efforts and good stewardship of our water resources.
“The cost for a litre of water is 0.001 cents so it is $1.20 for a cubic metre of water in Chatham-Kent,” he said. “We are very lucky we have clean water to use as source water and it’s inexpensive.”
Students were split into groups during the event and half stayed in the gym to brainstorm how they could be good stewards of water while the other half went outside to feel what it was like to carry a jug of water for under one mile.
McCaffery-Lachine said the robotics team at St. Ursula was also getting involved in finding ways to conserve water and potentially help the children in Africa.
“We can’t go over and build them a well, but we can think of ways to make it easier for them to get the water they need,” McCaffery-Lachine said. “This piggybacks on raising awareness of the issue and how we can make their life easier on the water walk.”
The team is coming up with a backpack that would act as a water carrier with a built-in filtration system in it so muddy water could be made safe to drink.
The PUC donated water bottles to the robotics team for their efforts.
Parents and families were also encouraged, with the Do The Right Thing club, to buy a water drop as a fundraiser for Me to We, an international organization that provides aid and volunteers in third world countries.
“Kids are learning to become better stewards of water here and to appreciate what we have.”
