Belouga’s Global Student Council is back for it’s second cohort during the 2017-18 school year. The Student Council is made up of a group student leaders from around the world that have excelled in global education and collaboration. Each month, these students write blog posts covering a range of topics related to global education. It is a great way to receive feedback and give a voice to the Belouga experience from a student’s point of view. We will be sharing these posts and hope you feel inspired to join in with questions and conversation!
This month’s topic aligns with World Water Day on Thursday, March 22nd and tasks Student Council members to put themselves in the shoes of someone lacking clean water. How would their life be different? What are some ways we can focus on and protect our ecosystem to conserve water and provide it to those in need?
World Water Epidemic
by Dezirae, age 13 , from the United States
1.8 billion people use a source of drinking water that is contaminated. Unsafe water and poor sanitation cause around 842,000 deaths each year. When we neglect our ecosystems, we make it harder to provide everyone with the water we need to survive and thrive. Today I am going to put myself in the shoes of those with the daily struggle of not having clean water.
My life would not be as easy as it is now. My type 1 diabetes consists of staying hydrated and taking care of my insulin needs. The access to water would be hard to find. Walking miles at a time to find water that is most likely carrying deadly diseases that could cause death unless cleaned. Boiling water is the easiest method and that is still hard to make sure it is clean. The syringes that I use would have to be boiled to be cleaned instead of disposable, that later can cause an infection.
We use water when we cook all the time in my home from spaghetti and soup to making tea. There is not that option for people at every time as we do. They rely on the food they grow, and that supply is minimal, especially at certain times of the year.
There isn’t showers available all the time to them either. You know the feeling of coming in from a hot day and take a shower and rinse off all the grim from the day that you just had. Or when it is one hundred degrees and you go and swim in a cold pool. They don’t have that option. The water is scarce, they save what they can and take minimal showers. They have to save the water for drinking so they don’t die from dehydration, because in a lot of cases like the ones in Africa the weather is very hot and they sweat a lot of the water they do have off.
We are so used to our comfortable lives sometimes we just forget about others in the world that need our help because they are not as fortunate as us. You can start little like donating a small amount each month to a donation that helps build wells for the people of the unfortunate countries.