(All pictures in this post were taken by project why children during a workshop on Respect under the section Respect for Water!)
Did you know that 5,000 children die everyday from water related diseases?
There is an odd phenomenon at Project Why where children, often girls, get up in the middle of a class and leave in a rush. Our teachers finally why and the answer they received was: “it is time for the water to come.” In many slums, water comes in a communal tank for a fixed amount of time so all abled bodied people- children included- are needed to fill as many receptacles a possible.
Different containers for different needs: drinking, cooking, cleaning, washing, etc. In some areas water comes on alternate days and so the need of keeping water clean is imperative. Sadly, the water does not often remain clean and that reason why so many children under the age of 5 die of water related disease.
A common sight in slums are dripping taps. Another is water overflowing from water tankers. To make children understand how much water is lost we carried out an experiment of placing a bottle under a dripping tap and seeing how long it took for it to fill. The results were an eye opener.
This is a reality that awaits us all if you do not act now. Water comes easy and we tend to forget that it is not a perennial source. A friend and mentor once told us that if we still had to manually pump water or walk miles to access it, we would learn to respect its value. There is a village in Madhya Pradesh where young men are finding it difficult to find a bride. The reason is the scarcity of water which means that women have to walk miles to fetch water. Some men are waiting over five years!
The time has come to respect water and think twice before throwing it away. Project Why initiated a recycling activity we call Once is Not Enough. The idea is to think twice before throwing any water away. We ask ourselves can it be reused?
One of our goals at Project Why has been to make our children aware of their responsibilities as global citizens so we asked the children to photograph water usage in their communities. Most of them told us that they had not realised how much water was actually wasted.
The Project Why Water Warriors were born.
What are some ways YOU are saving water?
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