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Water For Welfare
By Nell Auchincloss, courtesy of Kent News |
Members of the Kent community all gathered in St. Joseph’s Chapel for the weekly Thursday service. Students and faculty alike took their seats, waiting patiently to see what student was performing a piece by Bach, or what faculty member would present an insightful chapel speech. However, this Thursday night was different than most. The club Water for Welfare, run by Sarah Kennedy ’10 and Mary Katherine Atkins ’10 was hosting a guest speaker from New York City’s Charity: Water, an organization formed in order to spread awareness about the lack of clean water in the world, helps make clean water a possibility in developing nations.
The entire school was given an opportunity to view a shocking power point presentation centered on the fact that a billion people in the world do not have access to clean water. The guest speaker astounded the Kent community with surprising facts, ranging from how much it takes to build a well in a developing nation (which is about $5,000), to how many diseases can be carried in dirty water, including Escherichia coli infection, cholera, and dysentery. The speaker also shared videos and pictures depicting the challenges that one in eight people in the world face as they try to obtain water. Aided by incredible statistics, the facts were absolutely shocking.
Although the Water for Welfare club has not been in existence for a long period of time, it has been very successful in raising both money and awareness in the Kent community. The club’s goal for this year is to raise a total of $5,000 in order to build a freshwater well in a village to provide more than 250 people with clean drinking water. Kennedy said “The main purpose of W4W is to bring awareness to Kent and the surrounding community about the water crisis. For instance, in third world countries such as Africa and India, clean water sources are often non-existent.” Charity: Water has built over 200 wells in locations all over the world. The organization matches all donations made by school clubs. This is possible through the organization’s corporate sponsors and a very user friendly website, which allows people to raise money through their friends and family online.
Donations made by students, faculty, and alumni will help aid the club’s quest to help fund freshwater projects in developing nations. No matter the size of the donation, every dollar counts. Twenty dollars can give one person clean, safe drinking water for 20 years. Water for Welfare has already sponsored many ways to raise revenue and awareness on campus, by selling dress down day wrist bands, whose proceeds went to the project Water for Schools, a subset of Charity: Water. The chapel speech, hosted by W4W, also helped promote awareness for it drew this pressing matter to the attention of the Kent community by highlighting the facts and truths about the world’s need for safe, clean drinking water.
