Just seconds after the bell rang for lunch, about 70 students made their way through the crowded hallways and filed into a classroom in the D wing of Alameda High School (AHS). Neatly laid out on the tables was an array of plastic bags, writing utensils, and water filters ready to be packed and sent away to those in need.
This was the scene at the AguaEmpowers club meeting during lunchtime a couple of weeks ago. Once club founder and President Tonia Chen got the attention of the students and the conversations to die down, she announced that the purpose of the meeting was to assemble 200 sanitation kits to be sent to the School of St. Jude in Tanzania, Africa, whose students largely lack access to clean water at home. The volunteers would be tasked with packing water filters—provided to the club at a discount by LifeStraw—and instruction manuals into the bags along with hand-writing friendly notes in Swahili to accompany each kit.
As the event kicked off, there was a flurry of activity. Students hopped from station to station grabbing materials, scribbling notes, and bringing water filters to the front of the classroom, where AguaEmpowers officers were doing quality control plus boxing and logging the number of kits each student completed. Many of the students chatted with friends about food, grades, and college applications as they worked.
“Guys, there’s no more water filters!” one student shouted after all 200 kits had been packed just 20 minutes later. Shortly after, the club’s vice president, AHS senior Max Fry, announced that he would be heading to the post office to send the sealed package off to Tanzania.
Devin, a sophomore at AHS, packed seven kits on his own. He said that AguaEmpowers has given him the opportunity to learn how to organize and work with people his age.
“It’s nice to do something that affects the community,” said Devin. “I want to reach further out and get out of my comfort zone.”
Krystle, a first-year student at AHS, added, “I want to help others around the world. I have free time, and I want to spend it caring for others.”
Dr. Carolyn Cover-Griffith, who teaches Environmental Science in the classroom and serves as the club’s mentor, looked on the scene with pride.
“It’s so cool!” Griffith remarked. “It gives me hope for the future.”
It was a lesson on water resources in Griffith’s class that first provided Chen, currently a senior at AHS, with the inspiration to create AguaEmpowers last fall. Chen had seen photos of children in developing areas around the world and was floored by the distance and amount of time required—over half an hour per roundtrip, according to UNICEF—for them to collect water in places like sub-Saharan Africa or rural China.
“I grew up in a rural part of China, and we did not have adequate access to water or the reassurance that the water we used to wash our clothes or brush our teeth was clean,” Chen explained. “When I saw those pictures, it made me understand that if I struggled in China, others must have it much worse.”
In the past year, Chen has been hard at work fundraising by handcrafting jewelry and establishing AguaEmpowers as a nonprofit to receive donations, launching partnerships with water filtration companies like LifeStraw and Sawyer. He helped to bring clean water kits to 50 students at a middle school in China last December.
The water filter event at AHS was the culmination of months of work from an entire team of communications and engagement officers, publicists, and researchers—all AHS students—who joined Chen to assemble volunteers, track finances, and spread the word about the club’s work. Their efforts have inspired young leaders at other schools across California to form their own AguaEmpowers chapters, and Chen is working to equip them with tools for success in communication and advocacy.
Chen, who currently interns in the Alameda City Manager’s office, hopes to pursue academic studies at the nexus of public policy, environmental science, and urban studies when she enters college next fall. She also expressed excitement over meeting and collaborating with new people who share her passion in supporting AguaEmpowers’ ultimate goal in bringing clean water and lifelong infrastructure systems to impoverished communities around the world. Looking ahead, Chen and her team have their eyes set on making an impact in India and are currently searching for organizations in need of support.
“The important thing is being able to interact with diverse communities,” Chen mused about her future in advocacy. “I love meeting people with different perspectives, and I like sanitation policy because I can go to different countries.”
Ken Der is a contributing writer for the Alameda Post. Contact him via [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Ken-Der.
