Portola Elementary, San Bruno California

By Julie Calleja, 4th grade teacher, Portola Elementary

In January, 2007, my 4th grade class decided to write a book and enter it into the Scholastic “Kids are Authors” contest. The deadline wasn’t until March so we had plenty of time. We brainstormed topics for our book. One day, I happened to see the 7-minute Frontline piece about PlayPump® water system that ran on PBS. It really touched me, so I showed my class the video. We voted for our topic and the class chose to write about the water problem and PlayPump systems. The class nominated teams to illustrate the structures and scenery. They then nominated the illustrator to draw the people (to keep them consistent throughout the book). Teams of writers were created who, once we had the draft of the story, wrote the text. Everybody was able to contribute an illustration by creating a border for each page.

Once the book was finished, we voted on who we would like to dedicate it to. It was unanimous: Trevor Field, the man we saw on the video and the founder of PlayPumps International. We watched the video again on Frontline’s website and noticed that Trevor had commented and given his email address. We decided to email him to let him know we dedicated our book to him and that we needed his address to send him a copy. We were THRILLED when he responded. He told us that we put a tear in a grown man’s eye and he sent us proof with a picture of himself holding OUR BOOK!! We all looked very closely at that picture to find the tear in his eye.
Trevor suggested we raise money and buy a PlayPump for a village. He gave us RandomKid’s email address and told us about Talia Leman. A few days later, Talia emailed us and invited us to “lead the nation” in a project that would help eliminate the world’s water problem. We were overwhelmed with the energy and positive spirit of the people we met at RandomKid that of course we said yes.

We got to work. We collected possible names for our water. We then voted for our favorite which was “Water for Life.” The children then came up with a logo.

Our class decided we wanted the water sooner rather than later. Our first delivery was on May 14, 2007. Francisco, the delivery man, took our pictures as we rushed out to meet his truck. Before he helped us transport the water into our storage room, we ripped the plastic off the case to reveal the beautiful label, our label, that we hoped would save lives. We couldn’t believe how much water we ordered. We had over 7,000 bottles! In three weeks, we raised over $3,000! We had shifts in which the children would sell water at recess and after school. One child would work the cash register, another would be the product handler, and two others help up our sign that read, “SAVE LIVES! BUY OUR WATER!”

When the news came in that we had not won the Scholastic “Kids are Authors” contest, I dreaded telling them that they didn’t win. They had such high hopes!! When I finally did announce it, one of my students raised her hand and said something like, “We already won. If we didn’t write that book, we never would have met Trevor or RandomKid, and we never would have been doing this project.” I was relieved when the rest of the class chimed in agreement. I was so very proud to be their teacher.

When we first started talking about the water problem, the kids were a little confused. “Why can’t they go to a faucet?” was a common question. It was difficult for them to grasp the idea that many people just don’t have a faucet. The statistic “Every 15 seconds, a child dies of a water related illness,” really affected them. They all began looking at the clock. “Ms. Calleja, 2 kids just died while you were talking,” was a comment one of my students made. That really made an impact on them.

I was prepared for giggles when I explained that the bacteria in the water gave little children diarrhea and that’s what many end up dying from. I was surprised at how few giggles there were. They took it very seriously and understood the gravity of many family’s situations.
When we began the “Water for Life” project, I asked the children what our goal should be. I was expecting answers like “Sell $10,000 worth of water” or “Buy a PlayPump”. I was shocked when they agreed that their goal was to eliminate the world’s water problem for good by 2018. We vowed that we would all get together in 2018 and toast to our efforts that helped eliminate the world’s water problem. Of course, we agreed we would toast with apple cider since alcohol is disgusting.

Overall, I noticed the kids were really interested in the rest of the world after we began this project. Some would come in and report on other problems going on in the world. I think being involved in this helped them realize that we are SO lucky to have everything we have here in America.

Working with the other schools taught me that our country is full of wonderful people everywhere that want to help the most desperate of people in the world. The kids were so excited to get an email from the other schools doing the same thing we were doing. Since we started this project late in the year, we didn’t have much of a chance to communicate too much with the other schools, but we plan on communicating much more in the next school year.

I hope by sharing our story--that others will see that they too can make a difference with a little effort. I also hope that people see that there are people in the world suffering without the most basic of human needs: water. We are so lucky here in America. We have everything plus more. We should be sharing our wealth with everyone, especially those most needy. I hope people’s attitudes change to see that we are all one people and we all deserve the most basic human rights. I also hope that my students will be changed forever by this experience. Maybe this will motivate them to do more humanitarian work in their lives.

I also hope that this increases our water sales, so we can buy another PlayPump water system. ;)