Water Blogged

Each year Lead4Change, a nationwide student leadership program, hosts a Challenge encouraging students to make a difference in their local communities. Students work to develop a service project that addresses a local need using skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, and collaboration.

This year, schools in Minnesota participated in and revamped the Race2Reduce program to help develop their projects and ideas. The students collaborated to create a website with guides for different sustainability projects that they had implemented in their own communities. Their goal is to promote the replication of their sustainability projects by sharing all of their guides on the website, which can be accessed by schools and communities across the state and beyond.

And the big news?! Their hard work paid off because they won the grand prize of $10,000 for the charity of their choice, H2O for Life!

“As we wrap up our Challenge, we are awed by the impact students have made in their school, community and the world. And we are humbled by the highly committed educators willing to unleash and develop new leadership skills in middle and high school students. These are not just kind words – this is a testament to REAL leaders making REAL change.” – Lead4Change

Benjamin Butters, a participating teacher, said, “My goal as a teacher is to empower my students to take action, and the lessons in Lead4Change provided me an excellent structure to achieve this goal.”

Please check out their project here: https://www.race2reduce.org

Additionally, the students received a matching gift of $5,000 toward their H2O for Life service-learning project this fall that will fund water, sanitation, and hygiene education for students around the world.

Congratulations to the Race2Reduce schools, and thank you for choosing H2O for Life as the recipient of your funds!