A thirst for world development: Students test their water strategy

Eric McGuinness, The Hamilton Spectator
Published: November 05, 2008

It looked like a simple construction game.

Teams of high school students and teachers were handed instructions to build a small water filter and given Monopoly money to buy sand, gravel, cheesecloth and other materials.

But one team had $1,000 and instructions written clearly in English. It represented the rich and mostly literate United States.

Another had only $20 and instructions that were partly in gibberish. It represented the poor African nation of Malawi where many people can't read.

The Americans produced clean, clear water and the Malawians, even with donations from other teams, had to make do with water that remained cloudy after being filtered twice.

A Canadian team, which began with $300 and gave some away, produced twice as much clean water as the U.S. team. Seems the American filter was overbuilt and worked slowly.

It was a quick lesson on the environment, health, poverty, politics and more, delivered by two McMaster University members of Engineers Without Borders to a roomful of teenagers at the fourth annual Living the Environment conference, staged yesterday by Mohawk College, the Hamilton Community Foundation and the Ontario Public Interest Research Group McMaster.

Fourth-year Mac history student Dave Pridham, who plans to teach, gave the team from Cameroon credit for using a hairband in place of a rubber band it couldn't afford. "That's resourceful," he said, even though it broke the rules.

To the Ghanaians, who came up with the idea of double-filtering, he said, "Poverty doesn't equal stupidity."

The Water for the World workshop was one of a day-long series of events for about 100 students and teachers from 26 Hamilton high schools. It was held at Mohawk's STARTT Institute in Stoney Creek.

Keynote speaker Meagan McKeen, a Grade 12 student at Abbey Park High School in Oakville, encouraged the student participants to become climate change champions, but also to "figure out what you care about" -- perhaps poverty, hunger or disease -- "then look for opportunities and when you see them, jump on them."

So far, CIDA has not acknowledged the International Year of Sanitation. Despite ongoing pressures, or indicated it is considering boosting funding for sanitation and hygiene, such as contributing to the new Global Sanitation Fund based at the World Health Organization. As well, Canadian organizations like our own Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST), WaterCan in Ontario and the Sanitation & Water Action Network (SWAN) are all putting renewed efforts into the sanitation side of the equation and are worthy of major funding and support from both government and the private sector.

Learn more about Engineers Without Borders' School Outreach Program here.