ARTICLE - SLISE - LIFE STRAWS

STUDENTS' MOTIVE CRYSTAL CLEAR: CLEAN UP MUDDY WATES FOR HAITI
(Edmonton Journal) - By Gemma Karstens-Smith

EDMONTON - Cayley East and Bashir Mohamed raced to slurp down glasses of muddy water on Wednesday morning.

The liquid they were sucking up was an opaque brown, but by the time it reached their mouths the water closely resembled something that would pour from a faucet.

“It tasted normal, but a bit sandy,” Mohamed said.

“There was nothing that you were chewing on or anything,” East said.

The Queen Elizabeth High School students transformed the murky water into something clean and safe to drink by using LifeStraws. Mohamed and East, both Grade 12 students, are part of the Student Led Initiatives for Sustainable Education (SLISE) program, a group raising money to send 1,000 LifeStraws to Haiti.

The straws, 25 centimetres long and 29 millimetres in diameter, are said to filter out not only dirt and grass particles but also water-borne illnesses such as Guinea worm disease and cholera.

“You can drink right out of a puddle of water with these and not get sick,” said SLISE teacher Aaron Dublenko.

The SLISE program allows students from grades 10, 11 and 12 to apply their education to real-world problems, such as the availability of water, Dublenko said.

“It’s a way of breaking down the four walls of the classroom and being able to connect to the world and the community around them,” he said. “It allows them to see themselves as agents of change.”

The straws cost $5.50 each, so the SLISE program is looking to raise $5,500 to send 1,000 LifeStraws to Haiti. So far, they have about $1,000. They’re hoping to send the straws by the end of January.