Make a Difference...

World Water Day is about raising awareness and educating ourselves (and others!) about the importance of clean water. Here are simple ways your family can take part.

Send a World Water Day e-card.

Host a fundraiser to provide a water pump for an African village.

Join or organize a walk for water in your community.

Create a profile on Starbucks V2V and explain why this issue is important to your family.

Eat at a TAP project restaurant on March 22-29. Participating restaurants will ask their patrons to donate $1 or more for the tap water they usually enjoy for free. Proceeds go to support UNICEF's efforts to bring clean and accessible water to millions of children around the world. For every dollar raised, a child will have clean drinking water for 40 days.

Photo: World Water Day

Talk About It...

Share these facts from Water Aid America to explain to your children why access to clean water is so important.

Clean water reduces the spread of diarrheal diseases that kill 5,000 children a day.·

Accessible water supplies mean women can spend time working to earn money or caring for their families, rather than walking for hours in search of water.

Sufficient water supplies mean there is water available for washing and watering gardens, as well as drinking and cooking.

The Web offers kid-friendly tools to jump-start conversations about water issues. Some of our favorites:

Take a water quiz.

Enjoy games, interactive slide shows and videos at the Water Aid website.

If your child is 10 or older, try a concentration or matching game about urban water pollution, watch the trailer for a new movie called Flow, and have fun with an online water game from UNICEF.

Learn About It...

A Cool Drink of Water by Barbara Kerley (National Geographic Children's Books, 2006). Ages 4-8. Photographs depict how people all over the world, from India to Oman, gather and use water in their daily lives. The book portrays water as a universal need that connects all humans.

Ryan and Jimmy and the Well in Africa That Brought Them Together by Herb Shoveller (Kids Can Press; reprint edition, 2008). Ages 9-12. When Ryan Hreljac learns about the scarcity of clean drinking water in some countries, he decides to raise money to build a well in Africa. He saves his money from doing household chores, and eventually other people begin to donate, too. After the well is built, Ryan travels to Uganda to meet Akana Jimmy, one of the children he has helped. When Jimmy's life is threatened by rebel forces and he must flee to Canada with the help of the Hreljac family, the two boys form an even closer bond. Based on a true story, the book highlights not only the water crisis, but also other important issues affecting developing countries.

Photo: Water Aid America

The amount of water that many families in developing countries use in a day is the same as that used in a single flush of the toilet.

Read the story of how Ryan Hreljac and his family made a world of difference by raising money to build wells in over a dozen countries. Also, watch this three minute video about Ryan, together with your children. It will inspire your family to take action.

LINKS:
Read the story Ryan's Well

Watch the Video http://www.getinvolved.ca/

Photo: Ryan and Jimmy and the Well in Africa That Brought Them Together by Herb Shoveller (Kids Can Press; reprint edition, 2008)

We are grateful for a major grant--and two important opportunities to promote family volunteerism nationwide.

Doing Good Together has received a grant from the Leo Buscaglia Foundation, whose mission is Building community spirit by helping people to help others. We are deeply grateful for their support of our work.

Doing Good Together has been invited to showcase our Family Service Night event at the National Service Learning Conference in Nashville, Tenn., on March 19. We will be exhibiting alongside other notable service-learning projects from across the country. If you would like more information about our Family Service Night or want to purchase our Family Service Night Manual, please visit our website.

Jenny Friedman, executive director of DGT, will present at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service in San Francisco in June. She and two colleagues will offer a workshop called Building a New Generation of Volunteers: Innovative Strategies for Engaging Youth and Families in Service.

email: mail@doinggoodtogether.org

phone: 612-822-6502

web: http://www.doinggoodtogether.org