GATHER THE SPIRIT
A Multigenerational Tapestry of Faith Program
WORKSHOP 4: CONSCIENCE REFINED
BY RICHARD S. (RICK) KIMBALL AND CHRISTINE T. RAFAL, ED.D.
© Copyright 2009 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/30/2014 12:17:50 AM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
There is a silent holocaust occurring around the world caused by lack of water and sanitation. People are dying because the international aid community and national governments are not listening to the poor or looking at the overwhelming evidence. — Barbara Frost, chief executive of WaterAid
This workshop focuses on the scarcity of clean water on our planet and the importance of sanitation to protect our water supplies. Participants ask themselves not only, "Why is protecting water the right thing to do?" but also, "Why is it good for me when I do the right thing?" They consider how their own stewardship can matter to others, perhaps far across the world, who lack the sanitation to ensure clean water. They learn we should conserve the water we use in our own homes and communities, even though it may be abundant—not only out of respect for the interconnected web of life, but also because as we consume less of the world's resources for ourselves, they can be more equitably shared.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Opening | 5 |
Activity 1: Guided Meditation | 10 |
Activity 2: 100 Drops of Water | 10 |
Activity 3: Story — Why Toilets Are Important | 10 |
Activity 4: Game — Turdlywinks | 10 |
Activity 5: River Scene — Signs to Bathrooms | 10 |
Faith in Action: World Toilet Day — Toilet Tax | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: 100 Drops of Real Water | 15 |
Alternate Activity 2: Painting with Raindrops | 20 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Have you ever considered the role of sanitation in securing your health, comfort and ability to enjoy daily life? One way to begin is to reflect on how and when you use the bathroom each day. While all ages may find humor in bathroom jokes, this workshop presents sanitation as a key to protecting water resources, a serious matter that affects everyone in the world.
How you will respond to participants' giggling at this workshop's game, Turdlywinks? Give yourself, and the participants, permission to have a few laughs as part of the group's engagement with this important topic.
Take a deep breath to center yourself. Say a prayer of gratitude for the blessings in your life and prepare to start the workshop.
WORKSHOP PLAN
OPENING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
The Opening for Gather the Spirit has a symbolic chalice lighting; the chalice is "lit" by pouring a cup of water into a clear bowl.
Gather the group in chairs around the table with the chalice bowl, cup and plant. Indicate where you have posted the chalice lighting words. Say you will "light" the chalice by pouring the cup of water into the clear bowl as the group says the words aloud. Lead the group to say:
In the clear light of this chalice we see that as the drop joins the brook, the stream, the river, and becomes a mighty sea, so do each of us gather with others and become a group strong enough to care for and change the world.
Invite the group to connect with the sounds of water. Say:
We will make the sounds of rain. Follow me and make a storm together.
Lead participants by verbally directing and physically demonstrating these sound steps. Pause on each for 10 or 15 seconds, gradually building the storm's intensity:
Then reverse the process. Go slowly back through the sound steps and bring the storm to an end.
You might ask the group to suggest additional body percussion or other effects to make another storm. (Turning lights on and off for lightning is one possibility. Making whoo sounds for wind is another.)
Ask participants to briefly report on their Gather the Spirit activities. Who tried a Taking It Home activity from the previous workshop? If they did the scavenger hunt suggested in Taking It Home for Workshop 3, what did they decide? Does anyone have a new idea to share about stewardship or water?
If you have started a Gather the Spirit blog for the group, make sure all participants know about it. Explain, as needed, that participants can post results of their explorations of Gather the Spirit topics or other comments or ideas relevant to the program; and, they can respond to one another's postings. Hand out blog access instructions to any who need them.
Suggest participants bend and stretch before sitting again for the next activity. If needed, ask a few volunteers to help re-arrange chairs and set aside the table with chalice bowl, cup and plant.
Including All Participants
Arrange the chairs to accommodate participants with mobility limitations or who use a wheelchair.
If any participant cannot make sound with hand motions, adapt the activity. Assign a few participants a foot-stamping part, or a vocal part such as the sound of wind starting as a breeze, becoming a howl and then calming to a breeze as the storm subsides.
ACTIVITY 1: GUIDED MEDITATION (10 MINUTES)
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Ask participants to find a comfortable position. Invite them to close their eyes and listen:
Think about this morning. You woke up and went to the bathroom. After you flushed, you washed your hands and brushed your teeth.
Did you notice the water? It was clean and fresh and ready to use, right out of the tap.
Now you are ready for breakfast. Did you have something to drink? If you are an adult, perhaps you had tea or coffee. If you don't drink tea or coffee, maybe you had juice or water to drink with breakfast.
Ask the group to take a moment and reflect about how easy it was to get all the water they needed. Pause. Then say:
Please close your eyes again. Now, imagine you don't live here. You live in a country village. You wake up and have to go outside and find a private place to go to the bathroom. Maybe you decide to wait until you go to the river. You and your friends are using the banks of the river as a bathroom, since there is no other choice. You don't have running water in your village. You have to go to the river to get water to drink. You carry a large empty bucket with you as you walk to the river. After you are done, you wash your hands in the river, as do your friends. Now you fill up the bucket, with the same river water you just washed in. You carry the bucket of water home for your family to use it for cooking, drinking and washing, this morning.
Invite the group to share their responses: When you were asked to imagine being in a village...
Including All Participants
The term "guided meditation" may mean little to younger participants. Use words like "let's pretend" or "let's use our imaginations" to draw them in.
ACTIVITY 2: 100 DROPS OF WATER (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
This activity illustrates the scarcity of clean water.
Distribute handouts. Say:
The drops on this sheet represent all the water on the Earth. How much of these 100 drops do you think are fresh, clean water we could safely drink?
Let participants guess (or, invite the groups to confer). Distribute pencils or markers and ask them to mark their guess by coloring in the number of drops.
Ask participants to share their guesses by holding up their water drops sheets. Tell them the correct answer is one drop. On your own sheet, color in one drop and show it to the group. Say:
This one drop is all we have for drinking. The rest of Earth's water is salt water or dirty water that is unsafe to drink.
Engage the group to react:
Conclude by saying that clean sanitation in every part of the world is important for clean water everywhere.
ACTIVITY 3: STORY — WHY TOILETS ARE IMPORTANT (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Read the story to the group. Then, process with these questions:
Conclude by saying when we save water, we also conserve the plumbing, gasoline, electricity and other resources needed to bring the clean water to us. Saving water also connects us with all the world's people and all life that shares Earth's water with us.
ACTIVITY 4: TURDLYWINKS (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
WaterAid, an organization that funds sanitation to protect water supplies in locations around the world, developed the Turdlywinks game to build public awareness. Distribute game boards and discs. Tell the group:
The object of the game is to get everyone's discs into the toilet at the top of the sheet. You know what the discs represent.
When a player's disc does not make it into the toilet, they or another player reads aloud one of the facts "splattered" on the game sheet.
This game may seem gross to some people. Remind the group this is a fun and humorous way to talk about how toilets and sanitation help communities and keep our precious water sources clean.
ACTIVITY 5: RIVER SCENE — SIGNS TO BATHROOMS (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants continue creation of the River Scene, begun in Workshop 1, Activity 2.
Invite participants to add signs to the River Scene directing people to bathrooms. Say something like:
We're going to add to our River Scene now. We made drawings to show human activities on the banks of the river. We have added fish, reptiles and land animals. After learning today how important it is to not pollute water sources, we will make signs to bathrooms. Where should the bathroom signs point? To the river or away from the river? (Affirm: Away from the river.) You have about ten minutes to make your creation.
Playing quiet music during this activity may help participants focus. With a few minutes remaining, invite participants to clean up. Then gather the group and ask volunteers to show what they have made.
Invite all to look at the River Scene for a minute while you offer ideas like these:
Imagine you live upstream beside this river. If you get into a rowboat or canoe you can float along and see all the wonderful places and people and animals along the banks. You can see fish swimming around in the water. You can see the signs asking you to use the bathrooms available instead of polluting the river with human waste. Let's stand or sit quietly for a moment, and see if we can feel a real sense of connection, maybe a spiritual connection, with the life in and around the river.
Including All Participants
Provide a variety of work spaces so that people with varied abilities can work easily and comfortably. If standing and attaching their work to the river scene is challenging for some, let them work with partners who can help display their creations.
Not everyone is comfortable making drawings. You can suggest some participants cut out magazine pictures to attach to the mural or enhance the river with blue paper or crepe paper. Avoid extravagant praise as well as critiques of participant contributions—affirm all who help shape the River Scene.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather the group. Briefly summarize the workshop:
Today we talked about having access to clean water. Not everyone in the world has the same access to clean water that many of us have in the United States . We talked about clean sanitation, having the proper place to go to the bathroom. We learned that some people have no choice but to go near their clean water sources. We will commit to preserving clean water here and support efforts around the world for clean sanitation.
Invite participants to offer a thought about what moved them during this workshop. Say something like:
Think about our time together. What will you take with you as we leave today?
Allow a moment for reflection. Then invite volunteers to answer. Then say:
We will recycle our chalice water by nurturing our plant.
Pour the water from the chalice bowl into the plant.
As you pour, recite the closing words:
We leave our Gather the Spirit friends now, but not our Gather the Spirit friendships. May they be with us until we meet again.
Distribute the Taking It Home handouts you have prepared. Thank and dismiss participants. Set aside the chalice bowl and plant where they will be safe between workshops.
FAITH IN ACTION: WORLD TOILET DAY — TOILET TAX
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Engage the group to work for equitable distribution of clean water across the interconnected web of life by helping an organization that implements community water and sanitation projects in developing nations.
Tell the group about WaterAid. Explain some of the projects the organization does, and how the projects benefit communities. For example:
Suggest the group act on what they have learned about the connection between sanitation (toilets) and clean water. Provide a brief explanation about World Toilet Day. Explain that raising money through a Toilet Tax in the congregation is a way to make the congregational community aware of the clean water and sanitation we may take for granted while supporting WaterAid to bring clean water to places in the world where people need it.
Distribute poster board, markers, scissors, tape and glue sticks and Leader Resource 2. You may wish to form small groups to work on each poster. Invite participants to cut and paste the text from the leader resource on their poster or to write the words decoratively. If you have printed out images or text from the WaterAid website, make these available; if you have a laptop and printer in the meeting space, invite participants to find additional materials to use. You might engage some participants to make Toilet Tax labels for the money collection jars. When posters are done, display one at the entrance to each bathroom in the congregational building along with a Toilet Tax collection jar, perhaps placed on a small table.
Announce to the congregation before the service begins that there will be the collection boxes next to the bathrooms. In your announcement, mention the need for clean sanitation around the world and the connection between clean water and clean sanitation.
Collect the money and send a donation to WaterAid or another organization that works for equal distribution of sanitation and clean water.
Including All Participants
Find appropriate tasks for all participants in a multi-age group. Young children can be part of an announcement to the congregation. People who prefer to work alone can label collection jars. Active people may like to find tables for the collection jars or walk through the building counting the bathrooms and, later, hanging the Toilet Tax posters.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Meet with your co-leaders after the workshop to reflect on it. How was your mix of discussion and action? In the midst of the busy-ness, did you successfully include spiritual elements? Are participants growing in their understanding of the need to protect and equitably share the Earth's water resources? How do you know? What should you do differently at the next workshop?
If the group will do more Gather the Spirit workshops, look ahead to assign leadership responsibilities.
TAKING IT HOME
IN TODAY'S WORKSHOP... We talked about how sanitation protects the water people drink, and learned that in many places, a simple lack of toilets reduces the supply of clean, fresh water. We talked about conserving the water we use. When we conserve water, we honor our place in an interconnected web of life. And, we use less electricity and gasoline, which leaves more resources for all life to share.
We played Turdlywinks, aiming to deposit a disk in the toilet or risk contaminating the water. The game taught us facts about sanitation and why communities need a clean way to dispose of human waste in order to preserve their clean water. We imagined not having direct access to clean water. Concepts in this workshop relate to the Unitarian Universalist Principles of the inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity and compassion in human relationships; and, the interdependent web of existence.
EXPLORE THE TOPIC TOGETHER. Talk about... the resources needed to bring you fresh, clean water for drinking, washing and cooking. Some are gasoline to fuel pumping stations and sewage plants, construction equipment to build water and sewage pipelines, and workers to design, build and maintain all this infrastructure. Can you think of other ways your water supply uses more resources besides water?
Even if water is abundant in your area, talk about how you can help share water across the interdependent web if you do conserve. How can conservation be a way of sharing?
EXTEND THE TOPIC TOGETHER. Try...
A FAMILY ADVENTURE
Find out where the water and waste go after you flush your toilet. See if your town or city water department has a printed or electronic map you can see of the pipes that carry water and sewage in your neighborhood. You might like to tour the route your used toilet water travels to a sewage treatment plant. Where does it go from there?
FAMILY BRAINSTORMING
Even if water is abundant in your community, conserving water at home can help free up a variety of clean water- and sanitation-related resources such as gasoline, water transportation infrastructure and sanitation equipment to be shared more equitably with communities elsewhere in the world. Talk about ways you can conserve; find ideas on the Green Venture (at greenventure.ca/ecohouse/tours/wisewateruse/) website. If you can, measure your water use before and after starting the conservation. Then, talk about how the resources you've saved can help bring clean water and sanitation to people who need it in a community far away.
A FAMILY RITUAL
Thanks for water. Saying grace at mealtime is a common spiritual practice. If you give thanks for your food before you eat, do you also give thanks for water? If the group leader has set up a Gather the Spirit blog, post the water blessing your family uses.
Monitoring your family's water use. If your home has its own water meter, check it this weekend and again a week later. How much water does your family use in one week? If you live in a multifamily building without separate water meters, the building owner can probably tell you how much water the building uses in a week. The following week, make a special effort to reduce your water use by cutting down on showers, flushing only solid waste and taking care to shut water faucets off when not in use. Check your meter again.
FAMILY SCAVENGER HUNT
Does your water come from a well? A nearby lake? Or a human-made reservoir far away from your home? Call your local water authority to find out where your water comes from. Try to trace it back all the way to its natural source.
FAMILY GAME
If you purchase Water: An Environmental Quiz Deck of Knowledge Cards (at pomegranate.stores.yahoo.net/sc0114.html)(Pomegranate Communications, Inc.), a portion of your money goes to the Sierra Club. You can play the electronic version of Turdlywinks (at www.wateraid.org/uk/learn_zone/primary/splish_splash_flush/6394.asp)on the WaterAid U.K. website.
FAMILY BLOGGING
If your group leader has set up a Gather the Spirit blog, log in and see what other participants are doing and post your own results.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: 100 DROPS OF REAL WATER (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to place 100 drops of water on their waxed paper grids. Tell them to put one drop in each square to make counting easy.
As they work, ask participants:
If your 100 drops represent all of Earth's water, how many drops do you think would be drinkable?
Tell them the answer is one drop. Ninety-nine percent of the world's water is salt water or contaminated fresh water. If the eyedroppers were new or cleaned when you started, invite participants to drop one drop into their mouths. How satisfying do they find that?
If you have time, ask participants to experiment with moving their 100 drops into one very large drop. How far can away can they set a drop and still have it merge into the one next to it? The attractive force between water molecules (or drops) is called cohesion. Cohesion helps explain why water gathers together from rivulets to streams to rivers, mentioned in Workshop 1.
Including All Participants
Participants with fine-motor difficulties can be allowed to try as they wish; they will still absorb the message by watching.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: PAINTING WITH RAIN DROPS (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants make watercolor paintings and then see how raindrops or droplets from a sprinkler change them. Participants gain an experience of co-creating with nature and are invited to accept and even appreciate forces they cannot control.
This activity will work best on a drizzly day, although a hose with a sprinkler attachment or a watering can serve the purpose. Invite participants to use the paints to draw on a piece of paper. Advise them that water will be involved later and the paintings will change; they need not make a painting of any particular thing and pleasing colors in beautiful shapes or designs will work just as well.
You may wish to play instrumental music while participants paint. Invite participants to clean their work areas and rinse brushes when they finish. Suggest they walk around quietly to observe one another's paintings.
When everyone is ready, invite the group to don outerwear as appropriate and bring their paintings outside for a brief exposure to the rain (or a quick run through the sprinkler or under a pouring watering can).
Bring the group back inside. Allow participants time to look at how the various paintings changed. You may ask "Can you tell how the artist was holding the picture when the water touched it?" Set the pictures aside to dry.
Including All Participants
Some participants may absolutely refuse to let rain change their painting; most will go along if they know the plan in advance. It's okay to let some just watch what the rain or sprinkler does to the artwork of other painters.
GATHER THE SPIRIT: WORKSHOP 4:
STORY: WHY TOILETS ARE IMPORTANT
By Janeen K. Grohsmeyer
When you go camping, what do you miss most? Electricity? Or toilets?
Only a hundred years or so ago, people didn't have either one. There were no microwave ovens or toasters. There were no light bulbs. You couldn't just flip a switch or push a button to make things happen. For thousands and thousands of years, whenever people wanted heat they had to make a fire. Whenever people wanted light, they had to burn a wax candle or an oil lamp or just wait for the sun to rise.
And for thousands and thousands or years, there were no sinks with hot and cold running water or flush toilets in houses. You couldn't just turn on a faucet or hold down a handle to make water move. Whenever people needed water, they had to get a wooden bucket or a heavy clay jar and walk to a river or a spring or a well and then carry the water back home.
And whenever people needed to use the toilet—they couldn't. There was no such thing as a toilet. Instead, they had to dig a hole or find a tree. Some people walked to the river and relieved themselves there. At night, people didn't want to go outside in the dark, so they used a bucket or a pot then emptied it in the morning. And where did they empty it? They dug a hole or found a tree or took it to the river.
People who traveled a lot just dug a small hole whenever they needed one. But people who lived in one place and had a house usually dug a deep hole. They put a seat over it, and sometimes even built a little house around it, to keep the rain off and give people privacy. The little house was called the outhouse.
For thousands and thousands of years, people have been digging holes. And for thousands and thousands of years, there was no such thing as toilet paper. Ancient Romans used scraps of wool or sponges on a stick to clean themselves. In Hawaii , people used fibers from coconut shells. Rich people in France used lace. On farms, people used corncobs and handfuls of hay. In the desert, people used sand. In the summer, people used leaves. In the winter, people used moss and snow.
A few hundred years ago, people learned how to make paper cheaply. Newspapers and almanacs became very popular, and not just for reading. The Sears Roebuck catalog full of large, lightweight pages hung in a place of honor in many an outhouse. Finally, in 1877, toilet paper on a roll with easy tear-off sheets was invented.
People had also been busy inventing toilets that could flush. Queen Elizabeth I of England had an early model four hundred years ago. About two hundred years ago, Josiah Wedgewood, who made beautiful porcelain dishes, also made beautiful porcelain toilets. They were very pretty, but they were expensive and houses didn't have running water anyway, so almost everyone kept using chamber pots at night and outhouses during the day. Or, they dug a hole or found a tree or went to a river.
About a hundred and fifty years ago, people started putting water pipes in their cities and building sewage treatment plants to make the toilet water clean again.
More and more people started having bathrooms with running water in their houses. This was amazing! They could take a hot bath, just by turning on a faucet. They didn't have to heat water on the stove and carry it in buckets to the tub, and then empty the tub with buckets when they were done.
They could flush the toilet. They didn't have to dig holes or empty chamber pots every day and scrub them clean.
They could use toilet paper from a roll. They didn't have to use corncobs or coconut fibers or rip pages out of an old book.
They could wash their hands in a sink, and not just with cold water. There was hot water, too!
This may not sound so amazing to you. Most of us have grown up living in houses that have bathrooms. We think flushable toilets and soft toilet paper and bathtubs and sinks with clean water where we can wash our hands, and even take a drink, are normal. We think everyone has them.
But everyone doesn't.
Two and a half billion people don't have access to a toilet, not even the port-a-potty kind. That's about one-third of the people on the planet. One-third of us are still digging a hole or finding a tree or going to the river. Or, using plastic bags. One-third of us do not have toilet paper, and are still using leaves or sand or snow.
Of course, for thousands and thousands of years, that's what everyone did. Not having a toilet is not new.
But something is new: the number of people—two and a half billion people. For all those thousands and thousands of years, there weren't very many people. In a country village, there's plenty of room to dig more holes. When your tribe is the only group who uses the river for twenty miles, the river can clean itself. There's plenty of time for everything to decompose back into water and earth. In a great forest, there are plenty of trees. Being used as a bathroom once in a while is not going to hurt too many trees too much.
But in a big city, there are more people than there are trees. There's no room for each person to dig holes, maybe not even one. The riverbank is crowded and there's no privacy, not even outhouses. But in a big city where people do not have toilets, the river is where the running water can be found. The river becomes the bathroom.
And that is not healthy.
After all, human waste is what our bodies are getting rid of. It's not healthy to put it back into our bodies. We all know we should wash our hands after we go to the bathroom. We all know that toilet water isn't safe to drink. That water has germs in it. That's what sewage treatment does—clean the water before we use it again.
But the two and a half billion people who live without toilets don't have a way to clean the water. Human waste goes into the water, and that's the only water they have. It's the only water they have to wash their hands. It's the only water they have to cook with. And it's the only water they have to drink.
People get sick from that water. People die from that water. Diseases like diarrhea, dysentery and cholera kill almost two million children every year. Five thousand children die, every single day, because people don't have toilets.
Since 2001, the World Toilet Organization has been working to change that. They want every person to have access to a toilet. They want every person to have water to drink and wash with that isn't full of germs. They want life to be better for everyone.
They've even created World Toilet Day. On November 19th, the World Toilet Organization works to help people all over the world learn how important toilets are.
So the next time you use a bathroom, take a moment to admire the soft toilet paper, the hot and cold running water in the sink and the flushable toilet. Take a moment to think about the two and a half billion people on the planet who don't have toilet paper or sinks or toilets of any kind.
Take a moment to think about what you could do to help change that.
GATHER THE SPIRIT: WORKSHOP 4:
HANDOUT 1: WATER DROPS SHEET
GATHER THE SPIRIT: WORKSHOP 4:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: TURDLYWINKS GAME BOARD
GATHER THE SPIRIT: WORKSHOP 4:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: WORLD TOILET DAY
Statistics from the WaterAid U.K. website.
Toilet Tax
Please pay what you can before entering the bathroom. This action is to raise awareness about the lack of sanitation and clean water in much of the world and money to help solve the problem. Your Toilet Tax donation will be sent to WaterAid, an international organization that works with communities in developing nations to bring sanitation and clean water.
Did you know?
FIND OUT MORE
WaterAid
On the Wate r Aid U.S. website (at www.wateraidamerica.org), learn about the impact of dozens of projects to improve access to clean water in dozens of localities around the world. The website explains WaterAid's sustainable approach (at www.wateraidamerica.org/what_we_do/how_we_work/sustainable_technologies/default.aspx), including the effort to employ local skills and local materials and engage local communities in the planning process. Find extensive, detailed suggestions for supporting (at www.wateraidamerica.org/get_involved/default.aspx)global water and sanitation justice and learning tools including a slide show about children and water (at www.wateraid.org/international/learn_zone/primary/water_around_the_world/6684.asp)in rural Ghana and a primary school in India and an animated video, "The Adventures of Super Toilet," (at www.wateraidamerica.org/learn_zone/classroom_materials/super_toilet/play_the_adventures_of_super_toilet.aspx)which gives an entertaining explanation of how personal hygiene and public sanitation can protect us from diseases caused by the bacteria carried in fecal matter.
The organization's U.K. website (at www.wateraid.org/uk/default.asp)also provides deep resources, including the Splash Out! pages (at www.wateraid.org/splash_out/default.asp)for children looking to learn and help, and an interactive Turdl y winks (at www.wateraid.org/uk/learn_zone/primary/splish_splash_flush/6394.asp)game.
More Organizations for World Sanitation and Clean Water
The website of the World Toilet Organization (at www.worldtoilet.org/)—originator of November 19 as World Toilet Day—offers an international timeline of the invention of the toilet (at www.worldtoilet.org/resources.asp?no=6). Learn about the Singapore-based World Toilet College (at www.worldtoilet.org/ourwork3.asp), other programs to spread sanitation expertise and technology worldwide and how you can help (at www.worldtoilet.org/getinvolved.asp).
A 10-minute video on the Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (at www.wsup.com)website describes sanitation problems in cities in developing nations and explains the organization's approach by showing its local programs in Kenya .
The World Health Organization (WHO) works to improve water access and sanitation worldwide through its Water, Sanitation and Health division. On the WHO website, find numerous facts and figures (at www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/facts2004/en/)under a quote from the late WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook:
Water and Sanitation is one of the primary drivers of public health. I often refer to it as "Health 101", which means that once we can secure access to clean water and to adequate sanitation facilities for all people, irrespective of the difference in their living conditions, a huge battle against all kinds of diseases will be won.
U.K.-based End Water Poverty (at www.endwaterpoverty.org/)is an advocacy organization for international water equity.
Understanding How We Get Our Water
A McGraw-Hill website provides several short animations (at highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0072402466/student_view0/chapter11/animations_and_movies.html)that explain groundwater and wells. The animation about a Cone of Depression illustrates how overdrawing groundwater (not sharing well), has the additional effect of making the water more susceptible to contamination.
A very short environmental education animation for children, provided online by Matthew Babcock of the Michigan Tech Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, demonstrates the relative speed of water flow (at techalive.mtu.edu/meec/module04/GroundwaterSpeed.htm), comparing rivers, lakes and aquifers. The slow speed of aquifer water flow helps make wells feasible.
Celebrity Action for Water Equity
Older youth may have heard about the hip-hop artist Jay Z's W ater for Life tour (at www.mtv.com/news/articles/1538213/08092006/jay_z.jhtml?headlines=true)which raised money to build wells and water pumps in Africa. The pumps were designed as simple playground carousels, so children can have fun while drawing water to the surface.