Willow Glen Resident

Community

Youth walk the Badwater Basin for a good reason--fresh water

By Mayra Flores De Marcotte

The line of students dotted the desert's horizon, their light-colored long-sleeved shirts and pants blending into the surrounding desert.

The sun glared down on 28 Willow Glen teens as they made their 15-mile trek through the infamous Badwater Basin.

The group set out at 7:30 a.m. and walked for seven hours. As they approached the finish line, the temperature had sky rocketed to a blistering 120 degrees.

At noon, Raina Anderson, the youngest of the group, cooled off with a wet rag.

"I would dunk the rag into ice cold water and put it around my neck," Raina says. "I stayed cool for about two minutes at a time."

Another walker, 17-year-old Aaron Speciale, drank 18 bottles of Gatorade throughout the trek.

"It's amazing that people do this on a daily basis," Aaron says. "We had Gatorade to drink along the way and cars waiting for us if we needed to jump in."

The "Badwater for Good Water" walk, as the youth from Church of God in Willow Glen dubbed their journey, was an attempt to create widespread public awareness of the water crisis in sub-Saharan Africa and to gather support and funding for clean-water projects.

"We wanted to go to an extreme environment to highlight an extreme crisis," says youth leader April Hunt. "We wanted to get people's attention."

Badwater Basin is located in California's Death Valley. It is the lowest elevation in North America at 282 feet below sea level.

According to the youths' website, women and children in Africa walk an average of 10 miles a day to bring back water that isn't clean enough to drink.

"In these parts of Africa, a child dies every 15 seconds due to water-related illnesses," Hunt says.

The group was so inspired by World Water Day events back in March and the information relayed to them by other organizations working on the issue that they founded the African Water Project.

Through donations, the group hopes to assist financially. It plans to partner with Thirst Relief International, which is building usable water wells and restoring existing ones that were inoperable. The organization also has experience in well building and restoration and is currently working on water projects in Africa.

"With $1, we can provide water to one African for a year," Hunt says. "With $10, we can provide water to one African for a lifetime."

The group took pledges and donations from their community, and Hunt says 100 percent of this will go toward the water crisis.

"Through this project, people really get to see how much a dollar can do," Hunt says.

To date the group has raised more than $8,000--enough to build two new wells and fix two others, but is still looking for additional donations.

"We're not done with this yet," Hunt says. "The crisis isn't gonna be over just because the walk is. We're in it for the long haul."

For more information or to make a donation, visit www.africanwaterproject.org or call April Hunt at 408.717.1488.