MEADVILLE —
One table displayed bottles filled with water nobody would want to drink — dirty, murky-brown sludge.
It was to demonstrate a point: In much of the developing world, unclean (and unhealthy) water just like that is the only option for millions of people.
A group of Allegheny College students — Advocating Global Health and Development — spent Saturday making some drops of difference by hosting a day-long concert event at Diamond Park to raise awareness of the issue and about $2,000 in funds for Global Water, an international nonprofit organization that helps villages in developing countries establish and maintain safe drinking water and sanitation resources.
“For us, it’s very, very easy to get water” that’s safe and clean, said event organizer, Allegheny senior and Meadville native Julia Muntean. And “sometimes we close our eyes (to water-related social and health problems in developing countries) because it’s so far away.”
But the reality, according to Muntean, is that roughly 1.5 million children under 5 die in developing countries each year from diarrhea-related diseases — the kind we treat with lots of clean liquids and simple medicines — that are directly attributed to a lack of quality drinking water.
“Clean water is at the root of solving those problems,” said Muntean.
Another co-organizer, Allegheny junior Nikki Johnson, provided handouts that highlighted her second trip to Malawi, Africa last December, where she said a desolate area formerly used as a garbage pit has changed drastically since the establishment of a public water well that provides local residents equal access to clean water.
Johnson has “seen first-hand the ways water shapes a community,” Muntean said.
She said all of the proceeds of Saturday’s event — which along with awareness-raising included live sets from numerous area bands, food, raffles, games and more — is going toward AGHD’s current efforts to benefit a Global Water project to establish clean water stations for schoolchildren in Managua, Nicaragua.
Muntean said she’s delivering a donation from her group when she travels to Nicaragua on May 17 — one day after her graduation from Allegheny.
Ryan Smith can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at rsmith@meadvilletribune.com.
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Allegheny students host concert for Global Water
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