Do not take lightly good deeds,
Believing
they can hardly help.
For
drops of water, one by one,
In
time can fill a giant pot
-Patrul
Rinpoche
On a sunny morning, this Wednesday, May 8th,
Christine Badalamenti (Bada) and I set out for the New Hampshire Fourth Grade
Water Science Fair in Concord. It
promised to be a beautiful day full of adventure, both for the fourth graders
visiting the fair, and for me. I
have been an Antioch University New England student intern with Christine
Destrempes for Art for Water this spring semester. While Christine left to travel the world,
Bada and I agreed to take the reigns for this fair. Organizing a fair activity for children was a
new experience for me, and I was excited.
Christine, Bada, and I had brainstormed several ideas for activities
to do with the fourth graders. We landed
on the idea of creating a public-participation mobile. We arrived at the fair with the wire
structure created and paper cut into the shapes of raindrops; all we needed was
some students to share their thoughts!
Classes of fourth graders came to our tent where we asked them questions
about water conservation and why it is important. They were asked to think about how they use
water in their daily lives and where they get their water. Popular responses for how they use water were
to brush their teeth, drink, take showers, and go swimming. A couple of more creative responses were to
wash their dog and water gun fights.
Then we asked if they washed their clothes and we discussed how
we use water to make most of the items we use.
After thinking about how water is used and how it comes
easily from the tap, we talked to them about how 1 billion people in the world
do not have access to clean water and 2 billion people do not have basic
sanitation. In order to give scale for
how many people that is, we asked them how long it would take to count to 1
billion. At first they started out
guessing small, such as 3 days or 50 days.
They were often amazed to find that it would take 32 years to count that
high, which would make them 42 by the time they had finished counting. At this point one girl thought that was so
old, she would be dead by then!
Then we did our water carry activity with them, because
around the world, girls their age have to carry the family’s water supply 4 to
8 miles a day. We had a 6-gallon jug filled
with water and asked them to take turns picking it up. They really enjoyed this and some struggled
to lift the jug an inch, while others seemed to take pride in being able to
lift it a foot off the ground. But all
were amazed to think about having to carry the jug for miles on their backs.
After some discussion about water for context, we set them
to our activity to write or draw how they can use less water in their own
lives, or some other special message about water. We gave them the quote from the start of this
blog, to encourage them to think about how their own small actions can make a
difference. And as the day progressed
they had visual evidence of this fact, as each individual drop was added to the
display making a large and beautiful piece of art. While thinking about how to use less water,
one girl made a connection between water being used to manufacture items and
water conservation, and suggested that instead of shopping with disposable
bags, we shop with a reusable one.
Others stuck mainly to such items as taking shorter showers and plugging
the sink when they wash dishes.
By the end of the day we had a large art installation that
contained approximately one hundred water drops contributed by fourth grade New
Hampshire students, and if they all go home and turn off the faucet while they
brush their teeth, what a difference that will make!
Erika Stimpson
Art for Water Intern
