Canadore WE Walk for Water surpasses fundraising goal.
Feb 11, 2020 | Cindy Males, Public Relations and Communications Specialist
More than a dozen people participated in the Canadore College WE Walk for Water, on Saturday, February 8, 2020, at Northgate Square. The student-led event surpassed its $500 goal, including funds raised on campus prior to the walk. All of the money will help to provide access to clean water for life to 20 people in Ecuador.
“Every $25 raised brings fresh water to one person for life”, said Josée Lefebvre, one of the event organizers. “They do the calculation based on the cost of building one well and they divide it by how many people that well affects.”
Launched in 2017-2018, and sponsored by Canadore Students’ Council, Canadore and ME to WE (formerly Free the Children), have partnered to create a learning community focused on supporting leadership to address social issues, locally, provincially and globally, in a positive way.
Lefebvre, a third-year Dental Hygiene student, has seen first-hand the issues people in other countries face when it comes to getting clean water. In 2015, she was part of a mission to Kenya, where women were forced to walk several kilometres from their homes to get water.”
“It was interesting to see how much they work for water that wasn’t even clean,” she said. “These are big jugs of water and you have to wrap them around your head, and they hang off your back. You have to walk with them all that way, and they do it four times a day.”
“Often the women would stay home and just get water for the family, and the men would go to school. But, by providing these wells closer to the communities, it allows the women to go to school too, which I think is quite amazing.”
The Canadore WE Walk for Water was set as a five kilometer walk to represent the distance women in Ecuador have to travel to get water.
“I can just go to the fountain and get clean water, it takes two seconds to walk over,” said Lefebvre. “I think what’s nice about the walk is you bring awareness to an issue many people haven’t thought of because we are so used to having clean water here.
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