Overview

Goal: Students were challenged to educate our community about freshwater scarcity in our world today.

Description: Currently, over 600 million people worldwide do not have access to safe water.  By the year 2030, over half of humanity will live in areas where the demand for water is greater than the available supply.  In this Environmental Sustainability project, students were asked, "How can we educate our community about the Global Water Crisis?".   Students were asked to choose a country or region that is currently under water stress, research the current state of water in that country.  Then, they wrote a paper to summarize their research and propose educational, technological and government solutions to solve the problem.

In order to increase community awareness of the global water crisis, students created infographics for visual display to represent their selected region.  On exhibition night, they presented their infographics and asked audience members to assess and report their newfound knowledge through an online survey.  As a social action piece, students selected a water charity, Planet Water, a Xylem Watermark partner, for which to collect donations from the community.

Subject: Environmental Sustainability

Grade Level: 10th-11th

Materials

• Hook: Freshwater Scarcity video
• Global Water Crisis: Project Introduction & Need to Knows Brainstorming
• Project Outline
• Proposal Paper Guidelines
• Infographic Guidelines
• Peer Review of Infographic
• Water Pollution, Availability and Management notes

Mastery Assessment

• Proposal paper and infographic displayed at expo night summarizing the current situation of water scarcity and proposed solutions for selected countr with current situation of water scarcity and proposed solutions for selected country