It’s been just under a year since I wrote a story for DogCanyon on The Right to Clean Water bemoaning the massive number of kids in the world whose lives are permanently derailed by lack of access to clean water. A year later, the situation is at least moderately better, thanks to a number of efficiently run nonprofits who’ve been chipping away at the problem one community at a time. This weekend I ran into my friend Scott Harrison, founder of Charity Water (charitywater.org) who’ve now funded 2,900 water projects in 17 countries, providing clean water to 1.25 million people.
Charity Water just launched their Born in September Campaign. If you’re a September birthday (others welcome too), they’d like you to forego the stupid birthday presents in favor of your friends giving you a well for your birthday. Their mission for September is to provide clean water to ALL of the Bayaka people and many others in the devastated forest regions of the Central African Republic. The goal is to raise $1.7 million dollars to provide clean water for 90,000 people in a single month (that’s a cost of $20 per person served) and one of those great ideas that, once you’ve got it in your head, it’s impossible to rid yourself of it short of doing the right thing.
And that’s not even the subject of my blog this week so let’s turn to education. My interest in the basic rights of every child are the focus of my feature doc, One Peace at a Time (now out on DVD and easy to find online). The film is produced by our education and action nonprofit The Nobelity Project (at Nobelity.org). The ultimate goal of the film is to convince people to “pick and issue” and take action on a problem that speaks to them.
Having previously done a good deal of water work, The Nobelity Project shifted our action focus last year to the right to education. We’d already helped to bring water, electricity and more to the rural Mahiga Primary School in Kenya. But at a celebration of that work, it really sank in that clean water and an 8th grade education wasn’t going to be enough for these great kids. The majority of children in Kenya and most of Africa don’t attend high school, and I concluded we couldn’t do anything about the larger situation except perhaps to ensure that the kids of Mahiga did have an opportunity to graduate from high school. If that went well, perhaps our project would be a model for other rural education programs in Kenya.
Once we’d committed to building a secondary school, we realized that every year we delayed, another class of 8th graders would drop out of school forever. So we determined to build Mahiga Hope High School, and decided to do it in a year. We didn’t have a plan or the funding, but knew the community would be part of the planning, and felt that we could reach out to the fans of our films and find enough support to fund this school.
That was one year ago and I couldn’t be happier about the scheduled October 1 ribbon-cuttings for the new classroom and libraries building, a new kitchen and dining hall, the RainWater Court – winner of Nike’s GameChangers Award – and even a new pre-school for a dramatic expansion of the number of 4- and 5-year-olds prepping for big-time first grade. (And while we’ve been building, this great community has already started 9th and 10th grade classes in temporary classrooms.)
The multiplying factor of the GameChangers Award was a big first step. The RainWater Court is a full basketball/multi-sport court with a giant roof that collects and stores 30,000 liters of purified drinking water for the school. There’s also a stage that makes it a performance space and an outdoor classroom. The funding that came with the award included an Architecture for Humanity Design Fellow for one year. Greg Elsner has been living in the community, refining and designing, building and generally becoming a valued member of the local community. He’s the only guy I know that’s build an entire campus in a year, though he has had the support of community labor and up to 100 skilled, paid labor on some of our busiest days. (Check out my short film A Day in the Life of Mahiga at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FTpnycMoiQ)
Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, the Dixie Chicks and lots of other great Texas artists stepped up our fundraising outreach, and enabled us to consider truly fundamental ideas about education. If you had the money to build a great school, wouldn’t it have a community lending library with thousands of books, a computer/tech library with internet access and a sister school (in Texas), science labs for chemistry (with lab sinks and Bunsen burners), physics and biology labs (with an organic garden and an orchard), a kitchen with wash sinks and high-efficiency stoves (instead of open fires destined to blind and poison the schools cooks). Add in that pre-school for 60 kids, and how much have you spent?
Well, the numbers aren’t final, but we’re looking at a total a little north of $250,000. Not for a classroom or a building – for a school. A school with a mentor system and some job training, with HIV counseling and organized athletics and music programs. That’s education at a level that could be replicated in thousands of communities and not come close to the cost of another wasted war. There’s no reason why the things we take for granted in the developed world – whether it’s water, food, education, health care or other basic rights – should be considered a luxury for kids in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. You want a peaceful world? Start with a just world – where children don’t die in huge numbers before their fifth birthday, where water-borne illnesses don’t take many more, where illiteracy is rampant.
If you’re motivated to forego your birthday and fund a well with Charity Water, then that’s an issue you should act upon. Your life will be better for it. And so will the lives of the beneficiaries. You’ll be forever connected to those people who have received your gift. On the other hand, if the idea of helping provide opportunity and true hope to high school kids in a great community rings your bell, then the Nobelity Project could still use your help at Mahiga. We’ve funded 90% of this project. Some small part of what’s left may have your name on it.
Here are some links worth exploring:
The Nobelity Project: www.nobelity.org
Our Video Channel: http://www.youtube.com/nobelityproject
The Nobelity Blog: www.nobelity.blogspot.com
The RainWater Court: http://openarchitecturenetwork.org/projects/rainwatercourt
