Kids Quenching the World's Thirst

By Dana Leman, RandomKid Director

The schools I am about to tell you are taking "reading, writing, and arithmetic" to a whole new stratosphere! Students are racing to get to their seats to solve real-world problems, teachers have found new purpose, and parents are digging in to help with kids' homework with gusto! They come from four different elementary schools from around the country. The students represent every race, major religion and socio-economic background. With pens behind their ears and business cards in their pockets, they launched a campaign to change the world by bringing water to water-stressed areas in Africa and Asia by selling a bottled water product they named and manufactured. 100% of the proceeds go to supporting technologies that can provide safe, clean water, especially to children. The school children wrote and illustrated a story and are speaking publicly about the water crisis in order to educate their peers and parents. They conducted market research, developed their distribution plan and their human resources to make it happen--all as a part of their instruction time. Through this project, students learn and demonstrate skills that help them meet their grade level standards and benchmarks, including addressing character development. The children, inspired and motivated, are turning in outstanding academic work. The schools hope to inspire a huge swelling of schools nationwide to join them in their efforts to help address the world’s water crisis. The fact is, 1.5 million kids under age 5 die from water related illnesses every year. These schools are changing that, and themselves, in the process.

I encourage all the students and teachers to post comments here about their experiences, or have your teacher send me an email with your story, and I'll post it to this blog. Thank you.