the Andersons: The Water Project

Last summer I felt like I wanted to do some sort of a service project for our school. I looked up different options and organizations, tossed around ideas that I thought would be neat for my school to raise money and awareness for. I came up with The Water Project! A lot of students in Elkhorn...Nebraska...and even the US, are unaware of how blessed we are here in this nation. I wanted to show them what was going on across the world. Quick stat: Every 15 seconds a child dies from unclean water. When approaching my principal this fall about it I was unsure of how if would pan out...lucky for me, my principal is amazing and was all for it! Oh yeah Anne Doerr! So, we thought we'd wait until after the busy fall and wedding until we put this into motion.

This last Monday, we had an assembly presenting this service project to all of the 500+ Fire Ridge kids and staff. I was veryyyy nervous about heading up this assembly...Long story short, it went pretty well (aside from the part of the assembly when Ms. Sara was describing the difference between the clean water we have here and the dirty water they have in third world countries, following up by asking what kids would want to drink some of this water with animal poop, pee, bacteria, and dirt in it...of course three students threw up their hands...TWO OF THEM IN MY VERY OWN CLASS! Ugh! After I was JUST giving my own class the inside scoop about this service project and how important it was...You have GOT to be kidding me!).

At the assembly we presented the students with "The 2 Week Challenge" (Shout out to Britt Hardin for speaking)... Basically, they are to drink ONLY water for the next two weeks. Then, take the money you would have spent on soda, juice, sports drinks, bottled water etc., and put it aside to give clean water. They would collect their savings and put it in a cup that were handed out last Monday. The money would then be totaled up and donated to The Water Project Organization to help build wells for small villages in Africa and India! So great!

We are halfway through the project (It ends April 15) and I'm so unsure on what the results will be. It's TOTALLY up in the air! Kids could be saving money daily or they could have thrown the idea out right after the assembly on Monday. So, it will be interesting. I've really been praying about it and know that if whether we raise $100 or $2,000 it will help those in need!

The kids will carry gallons of water around on Monday to get a little little glimpse of what girls have to do daily in Africa. This is one gallon. Sometimes they carry 5 gallons (which is 40 lbs) 6-7 hours a day!