Carter Haydu
Moose Jaw Times-Herald
"Canada should be willing to share resources, because some countries need it more than us and if we have extra, we should supply others."
That was the lesson Moose Jaw's Amanda Geradts, 13, learned while role playing as part of the nation of Ghana during an interactive exercise at Cornerstone Christian School on Wednesday.
She and fellow Grade 8 students learned about water issues in Canada and the rest of the world.
University of Regina's Engineers Without Borders (EWB) chapter held an interactive workshop. Mary Hasfjord, high school outreach co-ordinator, talked to the class about the role clean drinking water plays in the world.
She told students only 2.8 per cent of the world's water is fresh water. Of that amount, less than one per cent is available for human consumption.
"Most is locked up in glaciers," Hasfjord said, adding 1.1 billion people on Earth don't have access to clean drinking water and approximately 30,000 people die as a result every day.
Even in Canada (which has 20 per cent of the world's available fresh water), she said one trillion litres of sewage contaminate what water there is each year. However, Canada has access to educated individuals and technology capable of maintaining a healthy water supply.
Hasfjord said other countries don't have those same resources required to maintain steady flows of clean drinking water. Therefore, aside from disease, villagers in poverty stricken countries often must spend much of their lives simply walking extremely long distances every day, just to collect drinking water wherever it is available.
To demonstrate some of the issues surrounding water, Hasfjord had students split into three groups - two representing poor African countries and one representing Canada. The groups received items with which to build small water filters out of plastic pop bottles, as well as pretend money to buy any items they might not have.
Canada's team had the most required items to build a water filter, as well as ample money to buy anything else. The team's filter builder, 14-year-old Rosalie Rheaume, was the first person in the class to complete her project.
However, despite her team having resources to spare, other members in her group refused to share with the other two countries (which were therefore unable to build filters).
"I guess the guys in our group were just big jerks," she told the Times-Herald.
Jerks or not, the inability for groups representing other countries to receive charity through begging forced those teams to take more extreme measures.
Near the end of the 20-minute exercise, the classroom became somewhat chaotic as African group members stole money from the Canadians, who in turn retaliated by stealing resources from the African countries.
"Yeah, there were a few fights," Geradts said, adding her fellow Ghana team members were forced to attack (it was just play fighting) the Canadians, because her team simply had no other options.
After the exercise, Hasfjord said, as with the real world, when one country monopolizes resources without a willingness to share, it can lead to wars of desperation.
"Had Canada just donated the money, you would have had better relations."
Carter Haydu can be reached at 691-1265.
For more, pick up Friday's Times-Herald.
