The ONE Campaign will team up with NURU international, an organization dedicated to assisting the decreasing poverty, again to host its third annual Water Walk on April 26 at 4 p.m. on the University Green. The walk aims to raise awareness of the lack of clean water in developing countries.
At the Water Walk, walkers will stimulate the everyday struggle women and children go through in these countries to get clean water, according to freshman Christina Minneci, who has been working to organize the walk.
"The goal is to bring awareness to those in the developing world, specifically Kenya, where young girls and women are walking miles to get fresh water," junior Mary Konstantine, another student organizing the walk, said.
According to Konstatine, The difficulties women and children go through to get water is so time consuming, it often prevents the girls from having the opportunity to go to school.
"We are hoping to improve the situation of women and children who have to spend countless hours a day collecting clean water for their families," Minneci said.
Walkers will carry an empty bucket on their heads as they walk through campus, according to Minneci.
In previous years, the buckets were filled halfway with water, but this year ONE opted not to do that.
"The reason we decided to do this is because as an organization that is advocating for clean and sustainable water initiatives in the developing world, we don't feel it is right to waste water for our event," Konstantine said.
Walkers can elect to take part in the "Full Bucket Challenge" this year though. Those who decide to take part will carry a bucket filled with sand on their heads for the duration of the walk.
"A full bucket of sand is equivalent to a full bucket of water weighs fifty pounds," Minneci said.
The participants of the challenge will be awarded a free t-shirt.
ONE asks that anyone willing to compete in the challenge alert them ahead of time so there is an adequate supply of sand.
Students can currently register for the Water Walk online. A link to the registration site is on the Facebook event page entitled "SHU vs. Thirst," created by ONE.
For those who do not register in advance, registration opens on April 26 at 4 p.m. on the green. However, according to Konstantine, those who register then will not be guaranteed a bucket to carry.
The ONE Campaign is an active organization on campus that aims to raise awareness for issues in the developing world, according to Konstantine.
"We table inside the cafeteria for World AIDS Day, we ask students to sign petitions to send to our Congressmen, we collected old phones in South Orange to be reused for health care purposes in rural areas of Africa, we distribute fact sheets and ONE bands, and we also organized a food drive to donate to the New Jersey Food Bank," she said.
"We circulate both written and visual petitions in the forms of online forms, paper documents, pictures and videos," Minneci said in addition.
Both expressed the desire of the ONE Campaign to make the Seton Hall community aware of how precious water is as a resource through the Water Walk.
"Although developed countries like the U.S. do not have issues with water access, we at ONE hope SHU students can acknowledge how water is consumed so thoughtlessly," Mineci said. "At our current rate of consumption, the earth will not have enough fresh water for future generations. Water is not sustainable unless we conserve it."
Erin Williams can be reached at erin.williams@student.shu.edu.
