Seventh-graders at Brown County Junior High School have helped to build a well in Africa after they studied a book in language arts class.
“A Long Walk to Water” by Linda Sue Park is the story of Sudanese “lost boy” Salva Dut. He has been separated from his family by war, lives in refugee camps for more than 10 years, and ultimately immigrates to the United States. The book also follows Nya, who has to walk hours every day to collect water for her family to survive. The water she collects is dirty and contaminated, but it’s all there is.
Salva and Nya’s stories intersect at the end, when he returns home to start a charity called “Water for South Sudan.” It raises money to drill wells for clean drinking water in villages like Nya’s so that young girls like her can go to school instead of collecting water all day.
BCJHS took part in the Iron Giraffe Challenge. “Iron giraffes” are what the villagers call the drilling rigs. It takes $15,000 to drill one well. BCJHS, along with 375 other schools in the United States and seven other countries, set a goal to raise $150,000.
BCJHS’s goal was to raise at least $2,000. Social studies teacher Amy Oliver, the fundraiser organizer, said they’ve raised $3,000 the past three years.
As students reached fundraising challenges, they received rewards, like seeing their principal dye his hair blue.
That money contributed to a well that was built in the village of Panyuon in Aguok-North County, Gogrial State.
All seventh-graders are studied the importance of clean drinking water to people around the world, discussing water sanitation and filtration, water transportation and consumption, and analyzing the best materials to use for carrying water in their math, science and technology classes.
Water-related themes were incorporated in other subjects as well, including the importance of geography to water scarcity in social studies, an “Art Without Water” theme in art, and water-themed music in band and choir.
Students kept drinking water logs in health class and created posters in digital citizenship class.
The unit culminates with a walk on the high school track carrying water jugs in PE class, so that students can experience firsthand what the children in South Sudan must do when they have no wells for water.
The story “really gets all of (us) thinking about how privileged we are to not have to carry water from a dirty watering hole and to drink water from a faucet without thinking about whether it is clean and drinkable,” Oliver said. “It can be a real light-bulb moment for some of our kids.”
