Thursday, March 29, 2012

World Water Day

Last Thursday, March 22nd, was World Water Day. A day created by the UN to observe and recognize the importance of water. To commemorate this day, this month's Red Ambiental events focussed on water. The way the Red Ambiental (Environment Club) works is that every month each of the 8 districts in my province has an event to draw attention to two issues, one being an environmental issue and the other, a health issue. Because the 22nd was World Water Day and the 24th was Tuberculosis Day, the events of this month focussed on those two issues. Last week I was busy preparing and planing these events, which all took place on Thursday and Friday. I presented at two of the events to discuss water with the kids of 2 districts. At each event, I was preceded by the local doctor and health promotors who taught about Tuberculosis: its effects, causes, symptoms, and preventions. 

The events all follow the same basic format that include presentations from local officials from the municipality, health post, and hosting school, as well as the school district, myself, and local students. The format of the Red Ambiental has changed this year to reach more students, so we are now working with kids from kindergarten through the high schools, whereas before we only worked with high school students. Because these events were the first of their kind for this school year, they took a little more planning and were a good learning experience for me and the school district staff that I work with on the Red Ambiental. 

That said, I had a lot of fun with these events and am really proud to be a part of the Red Ambiental. While there have been a lot of meetings to re-format the way the Red works, get things together for this year's activities, and organize events on a fairly large scale, I am only a small part of the team that puts all of this together. My community partner from the school district put the Red Ambiental together a few years ago and I am just happy to be able to help her along as it grows into something bigger than what it has been. It's also really fantastic to see the way the communities have supported and worked with the Red Ambiental. The way the local doctors are able to join in on our events and use them as a resource to reach the children of the community makes me proud of the way these events are working. They bring people together to draw attention to issues and provide education from trusted local sources that the kids otherwise might not have gotten on important social problems. We are even seeing some mothers attending these events, which is even better. Having the parents there and watching them work with their kids to teach them about the issues at hand is wonderful to see. 

Now that I've gushed about the Red Ambiental, I want to mention World Water Day. First of all, I live in an area that has been described as 'water stressed.' To me this is something new. But to the children who live here, it's all they know. When preparing for World Water Day events, I was coming across facts like, "people in water stressed regions are forced to use unsafe water sources and live in unsanitary conditions" or lists of medical conditions dirty water can cause, or numbers on the amount of water wasted in the United States. I couldn't use any of that material in my presentations because it is either common sense here, or irrelevant. Talking about how much water there is to waste in the US alone would have been a sore subject that I wouldn't want to bring up. When asked how they can save water, the kids here didn't have as many examples as the kids in the States do, because here there really isn't any water to waste. "Not letting the water run" while brushing your teeth, doing dishes, etc, isn't even possible for most families, because a lot of households don't have water that runs from a faucet, they have buckets or cylinders full of water to use by scooping it out with smaller buckets, an idea that would be lost on kids in the States. I'm not saying all of this to be preachy, I am sharing it because I think it is important, and it has been a significant aspect of my experience here so far. As I write this, I sit in my sweaty bedroom after having realized this morning that I haven't taken a bucket bath since Monday. My friend who lives about 30 minutes away has the same situation. We are smelly. This is normal. We also live in nicer houses that actually have water tanks, not everyone here has that luxury. It's not that we don't bathe because we don't want to, trust me, we do (Well, I do. It's questionable with Kerri ;). We are smelly because there is no water to bathe with.  It has been a great experience for me to see how precious water is and how important it is to take care of it. Spending World Water Day here and discussing this topic with people who have lived in this reality their whole lives is just another part of that experience. 

I have literally hundreds of pictures I took last week, so it's hard to choose just a handful to share, but here they are. 



My friend Ysela from the school district working with one of the groups from Magdalena de Cao.


I loved those hats...



...so much that they gave me my own to wear. Awesome (:


When you ask Ascope for a parade, they show up. 


Main street in Ascope, March 23 2012


"Water is life." True story. 


The third grade play :)


Game I made them play with too many people and a very small "pond" to fit everyone on. They really freaked out when I folded it in half after they "used too much of their water." Ah, dinamicas. 


I love non-formal education :)


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