Age group: Venturers/DFs

How long it will take: 1 hour

What materials you will need: 5 Litre plastic containers; buckets; paper and pencils; copies of the 'Water Use' worksheet

The aim of the activity: To raise awareness amongst the young people of what life would be like without a clean water supply.

What to do:
If it is a summer evening - or at camp - and people don't mind getting wet, let the group try carrying containers of water on their heads. Make sure that the point gets across that, whilst this may be fun for us, it is part of the every day grind for many young women in developing countries.

You could introduce forfeits for people who spill any. How far can they carry a bucketful? 10 meters? 100 meters? 1km? 5km?

Gender and water use
Get the group to calculate their water use using the worksheet. Get everyone to work out how much time they would have to spend collecting water to maintain this lifestyle if their water supply was thee miles away (a one hour walk each way) and they could carry 10 litres on each journey. What impact would this make on their lives?

This issue is a very good one for raising a discussion about gender as it is almost exclusively women and girls who have responsibility for water collection.

• Why do you think this is the case?
• What social changes are likely to arise from providing a community with a clean, easily available water supply?

Baby Milk Safety
Venturers/DFs can investigate the Baby Milk Action campaign. This is something young people can related to easily as they can take action by boycotting (and encouraging others to boycott) Nestlé products.