Clean Water Kit Packing Event for The School of St. Jude in Tanzania, Africa

On October 2nd AguaEmpowers held a water filter packing event where we packed over 200 LifeStraw kits within 20 minutes. AguaEmpowers is a youth-led nonprofit that is trying to distribute clean water for underdeveloped countries across the world. Within our Alameda High School chapter the event was held with the goal to make a global impact within our community at Alameda High School. Over 70 students participated among club members with over 100 community service hours distributed. What the students were packing was kits that consisted of a LifeStraw water filter, a handwritten note in Swahili, and sanitation wipes. A LifeStraw water filter

provides 1,000 gallons of safe and clean water for up to 5 years, possibly more with adequate cleaning. This was all being donated to the school of St. Jude in Tanzania, Africa. The beginning of the meeting was held in one of our science classrooms where we went over a brief presentation talking about the different stations that were set up among the different tables. The first station was where students would grab a little bag and a sanitation wipe. The next station was a Swahili table where students would make handwritten messages for the kids to receive. The last station held all the LifeStraw straw filters and then they would bring them up to the front, where Tonia Chen, Iskra Micovic, and Hayden Gong, our officers, checked them off. Student Adam Nguyen said, “My friends and I decided to go because we wanted to give back to the community and we thought that this was such an amazing opportunity to do so.” One noteworthy aspect of the meeting was having Ken Der, a

reporter for the AlamedaPost, be in attendance. He described the environment as “productive, electric, and

buzzing.” Charlotte Thomas noticed “that we packed the water filters really quickly and everyone made sure to pack theirs well and take time with the notes. I thought it was really cool how many people showed up to support the event.” A small community was built within that time and came together with their shared passion to make a difference. Overall the meeting was an extremely successful and amazing way to make a global impact for students without adequate access to clean water around the world.