On October 16, Lane Wood, program director of charity:water, spoke in an assembly and to the Winged Post in a press conference to promote awareness for his Water For Schools campaign, a program encouraging students to organize and participate in school water projects.

Founded in 2006 by Scott Harrison, charity:water is a non-profit organization raising money to bring clean water to underprivileged nations around the world. Wood joined Harrison’s organization from the beginning and “hasn’t looked back since.” As a program director, Wood has undertaken innovative projects to rally support for the cause and has educated the public on numerous issues that result from lack of clean water.

While charity:water started mostly with large and elite partnerships, Water For Schools is a developing campaign geared toward a new demographic—students.

“I’m launching a new non-profit from the ground up,” Wood said. “I’m trying to develop video, write curriculum, find as many ways possible of getting into schools and inviting your generation into the story.”

Having spent over seven months on this project, Wood has been setting the foundation and building the framework for the projects that individuals or student clubs are taking on. With all the emphasis on the youth generation, charity:water encourages students to start their own campaign through means such as birthday parties or even school-wide walk-a-thons. Further information about these fundraising tactics is broadcast on their website.

Wood also sees students as being a proactive group to target.

“It can be said that almost any big movement that has ever really started has started with high school or college students,” Wood said.

Through numerous fundraisers and activities, Global Empowerment and Outreach club (GEO), is dedicating their club week to support charity:water. The relay race class competitions will simulate how children must work through difficult and dirty hardships to access any water sustenance. The lug-a-jug activity, for which students must carry milk jugs for a certain number of days, will demonstrate how these children must carry heavy, yellow jerry cans for a long period of time across extremely large distances.

Teachers are also supporting the cause by limiting their intake of their favorite beverage of choice, and to compensate, students are supporting their teachers’ vows by dropping spare change in bottles placed in teacher’s classrooms. GEO aims to raise at least 5,000 dollars by the end of the week.

“GEO has decided to work with charity:water because its global impact is tremendous – reducing diseases, promoting education, and helping to save the world. In the words of its founder Scott Harrison, ‘water changes everything,’” GEO member Saloni Gupta (11) said.

The idea that “water changes everything” is prevalent through all the different issues with which water is interconnected, such as AIDS, malaria, healthcare, and much more. As more schools across the nation are realizing the essence of that motto, more are joining the Water For Schools movement to help solve the global water crisis.

Wood said, “I would love for you guys to work me out of a job. That would be amazing [if] we wouldn’t be able to talk about the water crisis except in history books.”