Water Blogged

H2O for Life continues to encourage young people all over the nation to become global citizens by focusing on the importance of clean drinking water for their peers around the world. Arpan Chokshi, a Social Studies teacher at Hinsdale Central High School in Illinois, took action after learning about H2O for Life’s mission. Arpan knew that the organization’s online educational resources would be beneficial for his students.

After learning about the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a way to understand global issues that affect students all over the world, Mr. Chokshi’s social studies class held a fundraiser to help address the issue of clean water in the Badi Dhani School in India, their partner school located in the Thar Desert.  Beyond raising funds for their partner school, the students worked to understand the impact of disease and the importance of accessible clean water for people around the world.

Students learned that India is the second most populous country in the world with nearly 1 billion citizens. Since the 1990’s, nearly 679 million people gained access to water in India. However, many Indians do not receive the clean water that is crucial for sustaining a healthy lifestyle.

Mr. Chokshi provided students with videos about the UN’s Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals to lead students to academic sources to research the importance of clean water towards each sustainable development goal. Each group of students used the following framework to understand their goal:

1. Read & annotate the background information on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
2. Rank each SDG 1-17 next to each goal with 1 being the most important to 17 being least important, with each goal is as important as the next.
3. Using other online resources, ie., CIA Fact Book, World Bank, and others, students then researched how water plays an important role for achieving each SDG.
4. Focused their chosen SDG towards the region of South Asia.
5. Describe the importance of their SDG towards the environment, the economy, and the society as a whole.

The students then used FlipGrid, an online video engagement resource, to create videos of themselves researching and explaining the water crisis in South Asia.

1. Using FlipGrid, students are able to edit and create a video best displaying their knowledge and creativity on the topic.
2. Record themselves discussing the importance of clean water access towards sustainable development goals.
3. Upload the videos created on FlipGrid to a DropBox designated for the class.

Each student recognized the importance of clean water for stopping the spread of infectious diseases like Malaria and Cholera. These diseases have a detrimental effect on the communities in India. Young children are most at risk of death because of dehydration and diarrhea caused by Malaria and Cholera.

As a final effort for the project, students shared their recently gained knowledge with peers to raise awareness and funds towards their project at the Badi Dhani School in India.

H2O for Life would like to send a big thank you to the students of Hinsdale Central high school on becoming global citizens and supporting our mission of creating and sustaining clean water efforts all over the world.

To see the resources used by Mr. Chokshi, please click the links below:

SDG ranking worksheet
SDG source worksheet

To see the FlipGrid videos created by the students, please click the links below:

Chokshi Student 1
Chokshi Student 2
Chokshi Student 3