Area students' charitable effort flows around world

Colette M. Jenkins

Nov. 6, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- NORTHFIELD -- The colorful plastic "crazy" straws being sold after Mass on the sidewalk outside St. Barnabas Church this weekend are helping save lives in some of the world's poorest countries.

"We have so much and they have so little. We can help them just by selling these straws," said Mark Bautista, 13. "It's so simple, but it's making a difference in places like Nigeria, where children are dying because they don't have clean drinking water."

Mark is one of 13 seventh-grade students who made a commitment in fourth grade to raise money to buy LifeStraws each year until they graduate from eighth grade at St. Barnabas School. LifeStraws, which cost about $5.50 each, are portable water filters.

The group of students, who are part of a gifted program at St. Barnabas School, learned about LifeStraw from an article in Time For Kids magazine while participating in a creative problem-solving activity. They decided it would be a good idea to start a LifeStraw campaign at their school to buy the water purifiers for people without safe drinking water.

Each year, the students sell some kind of straw -- color-changing drinking straws, Pixie Stix straws and SourPunch straws. This year, they are selling crazy straws (the ones with twists and turns at the top) with a Life Saver candy taped to the straw. The candy symbolizes the life-saving value of the LifeStraw.

Their teacher, Sherry Farley, said the LifeStraw campaign is meant to teach the children a lifelong lesson.

"They are learning that one person can make a difference in this vast world," Farley said. "They are our future and my hope is that they grow up realizing that because they've been blessed, they should give back."

In the past three years, the students have raised $4,400 to provide safe drinking water for more than 1,500 people in Rwanda and Bangladesh. This week, they sold the Life Saver crazy straws to their classmates before school. They will continue selling the straws this weekend after each Mass at the church. Mass times are 5 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 a.m., 9 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and noon on Sunday.

"What we're doing doesn't take a huge amount of effort. But it's making a huge difference in the lives of other people," said Marina Bostelman, 12. "When you help others, you strengthen your own faith because you live out 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' "

The water purifier is a tube about 10 inches long and an inch in diameter, with a cord that allows it to be worn around the neck. It contains filters that can capture or kill more than 99 percent of waterborne bacteria and parasites. It works like an oversized drinking straw that sucks clean water from a tainted pool, like a mud puddle.

The Swiss-based company that invented the straw, Vestergaard Frandsen, says it can save about 6,000 lives each day, if made available in countries where dirty water causes disease and death. LifeStraws help prevent diseases like dysentery, typhoid, cholera and salmonella.

This week, the students at St. Barnabas School got a firsthand account of what life is like for children living in Igboland, Nigeria, where the water supply is scarce and dirty. They got the lesson from Teresa Thomas, a registered nurse and independent missionary who has served in Nigeria for the past three years.

Thomas, a Massachusetts native, learned of the LifeStraws project at the school from a fellow missionary at the local church. The independent missionary corresponded with the students' teacher and asked if she could meet them. Her visit to Northeast Ohio, which she paid for, included presentations to the schoolchildren, the church community and the Nordonia Hills Rotary Club.

The club pays for the shipping of the LifeStraws purchased by the students. It is also working with other rotary clubs to pay for a solar-powered water well in Nigeria.

Thomas, who is in the United States raising funds for her nonprofit Ozioma: Hope for Wellness Corporation (Link), spends six months at a time traveling between 20 villages in Nigeria to provide medical treatment to the sick. The illnesses are often caused by unclean water. Because Thomas works independently of any organization, she depends on donations.

"When I heard about what the children here were doing, my heart was touched. They're giving clean water to children they may never meet," Thomas said. "I want them to know that they are heroes, that God is using them to help someone. I want them to know that their efforts are saving lives and I wanted to thank them."

Thomas shared a video with the students to give them a glimpse of life in Igboland. It showed Nigerian women and children who walk two miles or more to collect contaminated water from a stream. They carry the water buckets, weighing about 44 pounds, on their heads back to their dirt-floor huts to use for bathing, cooking, washing and drinking.

"When you flush your toilet at home one time, that is the amount of water they use in one day," Thomas told the students. "The people in Nigeria bathe in a bucket and wash their clothes in a bucket. Many of them get sick from the dirty water. Some of them die. All they need is medicine and clean water and your prayers. You are helping them with your LifeStraws. You're making their lives better."

LifeStraws are sold in bulk to charitable organizations who sponsor deliveries of the product to developing countries.

"The people who are dying all over the world because of dirty drinking water don't have to suffer. They are dying of diseases that are treatable and preventable," Thomas said. "I am humbled by the unselfish giving of the children (at St. Barnabas). I hope I have inspired them to continue making a difference in the world and I hope that they will inspire others to do the same."

Colette Jenkins can be reached at 330-996-3731 or cjenkins@thebeaconjournal.com.

To donate

Make checks payable to:

St. Barnabas LifeStraw Project

c/o Sherry Farley

9200 Olde Eight Road

Northfield, OH 44067

330-467-3375

Ozioma Hope For Wellness Corporation

P.O. Box 2661

Attleboro Falls, MA 02763

Newstex ID: KRTB-0006-39521264