We want to thank everyone again for donating to our campaign in the spring! We had a great visit to Uganda and got to spend a lot of great quality time with the children from the two primary schools we work with near Lake Nabugabo. They were so excited to receive their waterproof cameras so they could show us their creativity and what water quality means to them. Can't wait to get them all developed so we can create our photo essays.

Thank you so much to all of you who supported Water Across the World! We didn't quite reach our goal but the amazing part about this fundraiser is that we get to use what we raised and we continue to accept donations. Our giving page is no longer active, but if you would like to provide any additional support to our project, please do so here.

We are so excited to have raised enough funds to do some really cool work this summer with the kids both in Ohio and Uganda. Next week Tiffany and Richard will travel to Zanesville to meet up with Nicole Hafer (Muskingum County Soil and Water District) and her Conservation Kids Camp. They will be making videos about water quality issues in their community for the students in Uganda.

In two weeks we will be heading off to Uganda, where, through your support of our project, we will be able to show those videos to the St. Hildegard Primary School students on a portable projector and screen. We will also deliver several new water quality monitoring kits, and disposable cameras for our photo essay on water quality issues around the world.

We will send you updates throughout the summer so you can see how your support is helping our project.

https://buckeyefunder.osu.edu/project/2149

We are so very grateful for the donations we have received for our Water Across the World project. We are really looking forward to meeting with the Muskingum students next week and the Ugandan students in two weeks. We have until midnight tonight to try to push toward our goal. If you have been considering giving a donation to help support water education and linking students in Ohio and Uganda, no is the time to do it!

https://buckeyefunder.osu.edu/project/2149

Thank you for your support!

We are deep in the midst of preparing for our trip to Uganda in just two weeks! In only two days our official campaign to raise funds for Water Across the World will end. Thank you so much to those who have contributed - we are so grateful! With the funds raised to date we will be able to provide:

• the basic materials for water quality monitoring for the students in Uganda;
• disposable cameras to all of the Ohio and Uganda students we work with to help in the creation of photo essays exploring water issues from the perspectives of the students; and
• the audio-visual equipment for helping the students communicate from across the globe.

We are still hopeful that we can get closer to our final goal of $5000 in the next few days. The remaining funds would help us:

• give training sessions to Ugandan teachers interested in learning about how to measure water quality
• support a year round water expert, Mutebi Jackson, in Uganda to aid in sustaining the program throughout the year;
• and, publish the photo essays the students will create using their disposable cameras.

Thank you again for your support!

We are so excited about all of the water quality equipment we will be able to purchase with your generous donations. Now we just have to push on and try to raise the remaining funds so that we can run our Water Across the World successfully. If we can get to our goal of $5000 in the next few days we will be able to provide essential training for the teachers in Uganda and employ the local water experts and interpreters so that the children can continue with the project all year long. These people really make all the difference in creating a sustainable water water quality education project. With their help we are educating the children, and as members of the Lake Nabugabo community they help to spread the word about the links between how we use the environment and good water quality.  

Please help us reach our final goal! Visit out site to learn more:

https://buckeyefunder.osu.edu/water

Nine days to go and we really need your help to meet our goal! In only a few more weeks we’ll be packing up all of the equipment your support is helping us to purchase and heading to Uganda. The Ohio children will also be starting Conservation Camp in Muskingum at the beginning of June. Both groups are getting really excited to measure water quality in their local streams and water holes and to communicate with each other about their results. I wanted to introduce you to some of the people that make this project happen:

Nicole Hafer, Education and Wildlife Specialist with the Muskingum Soil and Water Conservation District. Nicole has been instrumental in making the connection between the children in her Kids Conservation Camp and those in Uganda. She has helped us to create videos and letters with her students and also facilitated a book drive so that St. Hildegarde Primary School can start to build their own library – right now they do not have books in the school.

Mutebi Jackson, Field Assistant, Fish and Monkey Project, Lake Nabugabo. Mutebi has been a field assistant working with fish researchers at Lake Nabugabo for over 20 years. He acts as our interpreter and water science expert on site. Without Mutebi’s help it would be incredibly difficult to run the Uganda portion of Water Across the World. If we can reach our goal of $5000 we will be able to hire Mutebi to help run the project year round when we can’t be there. This means more students would benefit from the hands-on science our project provides.

Makara Mark Mmaali, Teacher, St. Hildegard Primary School, Lake Nabugabo. Teacher Mark has enthusiastically endorsed our Water Across the World project. He is thrilled to be working with us as he sees the benefits that this program brings to his students. Mark helps us to organize all events at the school, devoting his time after school hours, unpaid, to help run the project. With your help we will be able to provide more advanced science training for Mark and the other teachers at St. Hildegard School.

We are getting there! Thanks to your support we have raised almost 30% of the funds we need to make our project happen. With these funds we will be able to purchase FIVE water quality monitoring kits so that each group of five students will have the opportunity to fully participate in all of the hands-on activities. For example, we teach the students to measure turbidity, or the muddiness of the water, in a local water source using a turbidity tube. We will now be able to buy enough tubes so that each group has one to use. We will also be able to deliver training to a small group of teachers so that they can run the project year round in Uganda.

If we reach our goal, we can do even more for the students we work with in Ohio and Uganda! The students in each country have been communicating through letters and videos. If we can raise another $3500 we will be able to do SO much more to bring global awareness of water quality issues to these students.

• First, we want to provide students in the program with disposable cameras and ask them to take pictures of what water quality means to them. Take a look at the photos below – the one on the left is a water hole that provides water for a whole community in Uganda, on the right is an Ohio stream in Muskingum being sampled by students – as you can see, water issues can be really different across the world, but we all need to be thinking about them. Using the photos captured by the students, we will create a photo essay book to share with the students, their parents, and communities – reaching an even bigger audience and promoting the idea that clean water is important to all of us, no matter where we live.
• Second, with full support of our project we will be able to provide support to the teachers who volunteer their time outside of school hours to run the project. Their help and support is essential to the success of this project and we want to contribute to their success as much as possible.

Please consider donating to our Water Across the World project: https://buckeyefunder.osu.edu/project/2149

Thank you!

97.5% of all Earth’s water is found in our oceans and is unavailable for human consumption without large inputs of energy. The other 2.5% is freshwater, however 98.8% of all freshwater is held in ice or deep groundwater and is also unavailable for human consumption. This means that only 0.03% of Earth’s water is available for all of life’s freshwater needs.

Many developing countries don’t have the resources to install infrastructure to treat water for drinking which is why it is so important to raise awareness and improve water quality conservation education. Even with infrastructure for treating water, uncontrollable biological events like harmful algal blooms (HABs) can cause problems with drinking water supplies. We saw the effects that HABs can have during the Toledo water crisis of 2014 when water was unsafe to drink for approximately 500,000 people. Because good water quality is of global importance, outreach and education is essential.

People have become detached from their water sources so a large portion of our program is linking students with their natural surroundings through scientific thinking and field activities. We teach students about physical and biological water quality metrics, and how land use changes can alter these metrics. We use hands on methods and take data on: temperature, turbidity (cloudiness of water), aquatic insects, and fish.

The best part about our program is that we let the students experience these activities together through visual media. Our future goal is to allow students to create photo essays of what water quality means to them. Each student will receive a disposable camera and take photographs of their aquatic natural surroundings. Your support will help make this and much more a reality.

We're one week into our campaign and well on our way to meeting our $5000 goal! Thank you for supporting our project; we hope you'll help us spread the word and help us reach our goal.

Did you know that May is Wetlands Month? Ohio has lost about 90% of it's wetlands over the past 200 years due to human activities, and Uganda is trying to take measures to preserve the wetlands that cover over 10% of the country. Wetlands act like sponges that filter and purify the water of pollutants and sediments, so are essential environments for good water quality. We're trying to provide educational tools to help make the link between healthy wetlands and good water quality.

How we try to accomplish this: We have been working with two groups of students (Muskingum County Soil and Water Kids Conservation Camp and St. Hildegarde Primary School, Uganda, Africa) to provide hands-on science training and promote education specifically focusing on water quality.

We do things like:

1. Create mini-lesson plans discussing how wetland and forest ecosystems are linked to aquatic habitats.

2. Put on biology displays which show some of the local diversity found and any unique characteristics they may have.

3. Train students on water quality measuring techniques (including proper use of measuring instruments and data collection).

4. Provide education on biotic indicators of better water quality (to reduce to risk of drinking metals or excessive organic pollution).

5. Share digital media created in Uganda and Ohio with the other students. The students really like communicating via pictures and videos to each other to ask basic water-related questions that they are curious about. This not only educates the students on the environmental similarities (and differences) and bio-diversity, but it also helps communicate that water quality can be a global issue that is important to the well-being of all communities.

Please help us spread the word about our project! We have three weeks to raise the funds we need for our project!

Link to our project: https://buckeyefunder.osu.edu/project/2149