Water is vital for more than drinking. Because 2008 is the Year of Sanitation, we're focusing World Water Day on the other uses of water: hygiene, water quality and waste water treatment. The United Nations envisions a minimum daily allowance of 50 litres of water per person for drinking, washing, cooking and sanitation. Yet over a billion people don't get this much.

Here are some discussion topics and learning activities centred around water.

Where does the water go?
Have kids draw a picture that shows where they think the water goes after they wash their hands, and where it came from. Hang up the pictures and use them for discussion about proper water sources, adequate water treatment before and after it's used, and water conservation.

When gold turns water into lead
In the Vicos River Basin, northern Peru, CLWR trains communities in water quality testing. The need for this analysis stems from mining practices in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range that threaten the safety of the region's freshwater supply. Mining processes use massive amounts of water and release waste water contaminated with lead and other pollutants. The testing equips residents to engage in informed dialogue and advocacy with government and industry.

Who owns your water?
In a group, ask these questions. What are your water sources? Who has ownership over them? Who protects their environmental status? How is your water delivered, and by whom? Is suitable, adequate water truly available to everyone in your own community? Where is water abused as a resource in the community?

A low-tech solution to making water clean
In Mozambique, regular floods and droughts have become more severe in recent years. This January the country was faced with heavy flooding along the temperamental Zambezi River. Droughts and floods can destroy and contaminate water supplies. One solution assisted in some areas by the Lutheran World Federation is the building of a cistern system that collects sand-filtered runoff water and deposits it as clean water in large storage tanks.

Enough water for all
The Rev. Dr. Ishmael Noko, Lutheran World Federation general secretary, writes that: “Although the world has enough water for its six billion inhabitants, the majority of the world's poor do not have access to safe drinking water. Human ingenuity is gradually turning God's ‘gift of water' into one of the most profitable commodities today.”

What does he mean by water being turned into a commodity?

Photo: Elaine Peters

There are some key ways Canadian Lutheran World Relief reduces hunger in vulnerable communities around the world. The actual projects we pursue in a given community depend on their particular needs, strengths and environmental factors. Here are three examples of typical programming:

• Improved small animal breeding (such as goats), crop diversification, land reclamation, recovery of native seed varieties, small greenhouses, farm management training, agronomy, marketing, provision of fruit tree seedlings, low-cost and appropriate irrigation and other food production or processing technologies.
  
  
• Nutrition and general health education: teaching the importance of fruits, vegetables and herbs in a diet for general health and to build the immune system.
  
  
• Development of water systems to build food production capacity

In the print edition of Partnership we introduce you to the work that Canadian Lutheran World Relief and Canadian Foodgrains Bank are doing in Afar, Ethiopia, where drought is a persistent problem.

The Afar is not the only region affected by climate change. Decreasing rainfall is leading to shorter growing seasons in southern Africa, and extreme weather like cyclones is more frequent in places like Bangladesh.

According to the CFGB's climate change report available here, projections indicate that a change in climate will account for reduced crop yields in about a decade across Africa, Asia and South America. Russia may be hardest hit with a five percent drop in production.

Our approach to climate change, therefore, has a clear connection to global hunger. The next time you do something good for the environment, remember that you're also doing good for other people around the world!

Canadian Lutheran World Relief is interested in getting you thinking about where your food comes from and the challenges other people in the world might have in obtaining their own food. One way you can bring this into sharp focus in your own life is to consider the 100-Mile Diet. The basic concept of the diet is to limit your food intake to ingredients grown within a roughly 100-mile radius of your home.

Trying the diet may help you learn about food seasonality, the immense transportation efforts tied to your favourite foods, our dependence on food preservatives and stabilizers, nutritional challenges and more. Translate what you learn into what you might see is the reality for other global communities that live without fridges, modern transportation networks and other tools common to your own situation.

While such a diet may be hard to follow for any length of time, you may want to consider hosting a 100-Mile Meal, which would be one meal made along the lines of the diet. Invite others (your friends, family or church) to take part.

Information on the original 100-Mile Diet can be found at www.100milediet.org.

CLWR is not affiliated with www.100milediet.org and offers the link as a source of information only, not as an endorsement.

In our print edition of Partnership, we gave you some activities to do to remember global hunger during this leap year. Here's a crossword puzzle for kids that focuses on food and hunger.

Click here for a printable version of the Kids' Crossword



Across
2  Many people eat with their _____
6  People need _____ as well as food
7  First meal of the day
9  Many people season their food with this
11  Babies drink this
13  Many people don't have a _____ in which to store fresh food
15  People who grow food
16  Many people skip a meal because they live on less than ___ dollars a day
17  Plants need water and ________ to grow

Down
1  Another word for calories (you can move because you have lots of…)
3  Some people can't cook their meal because they don't have a
4  Improperly stored or cooked food can make people ____
5  We grow this in Canada and send it to hungry people overseas
6  We do this to our hands, and to our fruits and veggies before eating
8  Opposite of hungry
10  Bananas grow on a ____
11  Many people don't eat a lot of ____ because it's expensive (rhymes with “heat”)
12  Nutritious food can make people _______
14  Food grows in this

ANSWERS:
Move your mouse over the box below to see the answers.