Year 4 CAFOD Workshop

A big thank you to Steve from CAFOD who came back to OLSJ to work especially with Year 4, on a 'Water Without Taps' workshop - to support their Geography unit about flooding.

The workshop focused on children around the world and the issues around water collection, supply and sanitation.

Steve played an exciting game with the children, where the children had form groups and to imagine that they were a family of farmers living in Zimbabwe, in a village where their pump had broken down. 

Each group had to work together to ‘collect’ water from a ‘river’ two kilometres away. They needed to collect enough water to meet their family’s needs, for things such as drinking water and to water crops for food. 

However, Steve and Mr Riste Smith gave the children ‘chance cards’ - and children then had to deal with changes to their situation that impacted their ability to collect enough water. 

Each group filled in a family sheet to show how many of their needs they had been able to fulfil through collecting water. It was an exciting game, however, it reflects the realities of real life for many people across the world, which the children reflected upon with sensitivity and compassion.

Sub-Saharan Africa still suffers from lack of access to safe water and toilets. In 2010, 65% of wells or pumps in rural Zimbabwe were not working properly. In some parts of Africa the water situation has worsened since 2000, due to more frequent periods of drought, deforestation and desertification. Time spent collecting water is one of the major reasons why many girls still do not go to school, even though primary education is generally free. Lack of water affects families’ ability to grow enough crops to eat or sell. This affects the ability of subsistence farmers to expand their income and develop their lives. Lack of water and drinking polluted water affects the health of millions of children, especially infants under five, through diarrhoea and water borne diseases such as cholera. 

The production of cash crops, such as tobacco and cotton, can have dire consequences on water supplies for local people, whilst multinational companies reap rich benefits from the sale of such commodities.  

Our charity work earlier in the year - "The Big Lent Walk," raised more than £500 for CAFOD. 

CAFOD have worked to fix water pumps in Zimbabwe and in other parts of Africa. We are so pleased that our charity initaitves in school make such a difference, thank you for your continued support. 

If you would like to play the game at home or learn more about the work CAFOD carry out, take a look at the attached resource.