Hey everyone! Hope you all are doing well. I'm still in school and it will be my last semester. Let me tell you all what I've been working on this semester for a class I'm in.
Hands Across the Water (HATW) is a Service Learning program that includes a 6K Walkathon to raise money and awareness for the global water crisis. It is a student-led project (BUAD450) in the Haslam College of Business that partners with P&G’s Children’s Safe Drinking Water program, MITSOM College in Pune (south of Mumbai) and Novexis Healthcare in Mumbai. The goal of the project is to research, fund and establish a sustainable model for the not-for-profit distribution of P&G’s water purification packets in rural and urban India.
P&G has developed purification packets to make up to 10 liters of dirty water you can find in your backyard or river into safe drinking water! Just one of these packets cost 10cents. Our goal is to raise $15,000 which is equivalent to 1.5 million liters of water for those who need it in developing countries.
Currently in developing countries, children as young as 4 years old are responsible for finding and bringing back water for their families. These children walk on average 6 kilometers each trip carrying heavy containers of unclean water. Now imagine that this water is actually so polluted that illnesses it causes will kill more people in their village than HIV/Aids, malaria and TB combined.
Their will be a walkathon held on October 29, 2017 on the campus of UT in Knoxville and 4 campuses of MITSOM in Pune. Participants will walk/run 6K while carrying two sealed, one-gallon containers of drinking water. Carrying the water is a significant way to show solidarity with those in the developing world who must walk this same distance carrying much heavier water containers filled with water from contaminated sources. Ideally, we wish to walk on the same day as our partners in India.
I know not all of you will be able to make the walkathon. However, you can still help and donate at our website we created at the bottom. If you are able to come and participate in the walk that would be fantastic too. Check out our website and you can donante and even become a sponsor and you could ultimately save lives!
