Riceville School

Here at Riceville School we had a hat day to raise funds for our water project! Students paid one dollar to wear their favourite silliest hat! It was great to see the participation! There will be more fun to come and we'll keep you updated.

- School Contact: Faun Ramey

Columbus High

Here's just a taste of what Columbus High is doing...A Walk For Water!!!

All students, parents, friends, and families will join the Columbus Catholic High School 5 Km "Walk for Water" Saturday, March 6th. The entry fee is $10.00 per person or minimum of $10.00 in pledges. (Children walking with parents are free, but are highly encouraged to seek pledges!)

The purpose of the walk is to raise awareness on the lack of water availability throughout the world, and to raise money to help build water retention units in Kenya. Women and children in third world countries often walk over five kilometers (3 miles) one way to collect drinking water. There will be prizes for the teams with the most spirit, best costumes reflecting water, and of course, the most pledged dollars collected.

We hope to get the whole Cedar Valley community involved. We will be looking into media coverage for the event as well.

In addition, our Ecology class will be selling t-shirts and NHS will be selling Aluminum Water Bottles.

We are getting very excited!

- School Contact: Joanna Seymour

Kelly High School

The Kelly High School Science club has been hard at work getting ready to kick off our fundraising efforts. For the past two weeks we have been preparing posters and announcements for our bottled water sale to raise money for the Samburu District and awareness for the water crisis. The project has been extremely popular and many new members have joined the club after hearing about our project. The sale will take place on February 18th. We are looking forward to the event and to talking to Ray on Skype tomorrow!

- School Contact: Aaron Reedy

Southwood Secondary School

Students and staff at Southwood Secondary School (Cambridge, Ontario) are excited to be active participants in the Siberian Express for Water expedition. Promoting awareness and understanding of environmental and social issues is a constant effort at Southwood. Our most recent campaigns have ranged from funding micro-credit loans for rural women in Kenya to communicating the effects of climate change via the Cape Farewell Youth Expedition across the North Atlantic.

For Southwood, the Siberian Express for Water represents a unique rallying-point and the opportunity to expand on what has become this semester's theme: Water. As part of its fund raising support for freshwater well construction, Southwood plans to host a fair-trade coffee house and art auction during Environment Week in April. Students will also be involved in a number of other promotions and events throughout the semester including a groundwater conference and workshop, and volunteering at the Children's Groundwater Festival. Efforts are also being made to connect with other local high schools to increase awareness and support across Waterloo Region. Progress updates to come throughout the next few months...

- School Contact: Christopher Giesler

St. Thomas More

St. Thomas More is a school of 380 students in Ottawa, Ontario. The grade 5 and 6 students will be participating in the Siberian Express project. The students are beginning to meet to discuss possibilities for fundraising as well as to go through the modules which I am sure will inspire ideas.

- School Contact: Shelly (Graham) Lyonnais

Bethlehem Catholic High School

As a kick-off to the Siberian Express for Water, our students here at Bethlehem Catholic High School in Saskatchewan had a "Dress like Ray" relay at an all school assembly on February 11th. Each of the four grades and staff selected an eight person team to participate in a trivia game (via powerpoint). Questions were asked based on the education modules. (In preparation, the Social Justice student committee selected and printed trivia on stylized water droplets and posted them around the school to kick off the second semester.) After each question, a member from each team raced to a room in the school to collect a piece of cold-weather gear. They then returned to the gym to dress a member of the team. After the final question, the "Ray-clones" headed outside and pulled a loaded sled in a brief race. WHAT AN EVENT IT WAS!!!

Leading up to this day, we showed clips about Ray as part of our morning devotions. Devotions touched on Ray, but also on Water. (As a school, we have always had a water focus.) We are also going to show 'Running the Sahara' in the theatre at lunch, collect donations at the door as well as selling some snacks. (This is just the beginning...)

- School Contact: Dominique Bokshowan

Minnekhada School

Minnekhada School in B.C. already raised funds with Valentine’s Day candy-grams and is presently in the middle of a Penny Drive between all the girls and all the boys. Stay tuned to see who wins!

- School Contact: Laurie Sinclair

Southside Elementary School

We're in full swing at Southside Elementary School in Florida...

Candy-gram sales for Valentine's Day is just the beginning of our fundraising campaign...

Although student council will be the leadership in the drive, our grades 2-5 are also getting into the action with i2P. They are working on PSA podcasting projects around Ray's run, Africa's/Florida's water issues, and givingwater.org. These will be enhanced podcasts with a poster of their topic We've written letters to local business leaders, inviting them to donate $10 to hang one of these posters in their place of business. Our local radio station is playing the podcasts, and plugging our projects, as well as thanking those who have agreed to hang students' work. Kids are pumped!! We finished with 5th grade projects this Friday, and the first posters will be delivered. We'll update you on this bi-weekly.

In addition, we can't pull sleds in the snow sooooo, we're going to Run Like Ray (a "mini-marathon" at 5km). This was a 5th grade student's idea. Students will ask family and friends for donations for their run. The idea is that they will be given a water bottle at the end of the run that they will have to drink it all up, then fill up the bottle up with change and return it to the school. We are still in the planning stages on this and we’ll keep you posted!

We are very excited to leaders in our community while helping with this international cause.

- School Contact: Kathy Hobbs

Jonas Salk High-Tech Academy

Jonas Salk High-Tech Academy is making learning truly meaningful. Students will first be discussing what it means to overcome obstacles, what it means to be in control of our lives and the challenges of our insecurities. Students will share their views by writing reflections in their journals. Next, students will be introduced, through the use of video clips, to incredible humans who have overcome incredible odds including clips on Ray Zahab. After a showing of "Running The Sahara", students will discuss why Ray decided that from now on everything that he participated in would be to educate people about issues affecting humans around the world!

Following this introduction, students will be learning about Lake Baikal and discussing and comparing it to the Great Lakes. Numerous videos will accompany the lessons.

The last piece of the lesson plan is to introduce students to the i2P interface, to the 2010 Water Challenge and to explain how they will be participating in an extraordinary act of coming together for a common goal with schools from all over Canada and the USA and abroad.

- School Contact: Paul Devoto

D'Arcy McGee High School

On February 19th and 20th D'Arcy McGee High School's grade 11 leadership class (Advisory Mentorship Program "AMP") are organizing an ALL NIGHT BALL HOCKEY TOURNAMENT in our gym. We are charging $50 per team with a maximum of 10 players. All proceeds go to Ryan's Well. In addition we are also having a bake sale for the morning. We have had a booth set up (where students had to pick up their ball hockey forms) in the cafeteria with posters and information on i2P and Ryan's Well.

The next plan is to do a showing of "Running the Sahara" during Advisory Homeroom Time and lunch and if the students want to participate, they will donate $1.

Here's how we are using i2P:

• Students teaching students! The "AMPs" are also in charge of grade 9 advisory time (25 minutes). Over the last few weeks they have been teaching and discussing "water issues" with the students and incorporating the modules and videos of the i2P expeditions with Ray and talking about Ryan's Well Foundation.
• Our French Teacher will be teaching a section on Extreme Sports and incorporating the i2P modules and the Lake Baikal Expedition as a platform for discussions.
• Our Science Teacher has been covering "water" with her students and using the i2P website and modules.
• Our English Teacher has a big unit he does on water issues and how they are represented by the media. He has the students look at different spins in relation to articles written by newspapers covering topics such as "Water- Is it a right or a commodity", "Accepting Privatization", "Water-Is there a crisis?" He then has the students write their own "spins" on the topic and they then have to create their own news paper on WATER. The modules help a great deal! They are looking forward to following the expedition in class.
• Our Art teacher will be having the students represent and paint what they see from the landscape pictures of Lake Baikal.

- School Contact: Adriana Rossi

Oak-Land Jr. High

Let the fundraising begin! At Oak-Land Jr. High, each class (7th grade Global Concepts class and 8th grade science classes) will have their own bucket. Coins put in by the class will be calculated as a positive cash flow, dollar bills put in by the competing classes negate the coins. A little competition can't hurt!

Also, they have been working on setting up a web page that helps promote what they are doing with their interactions with impossible2Possible. Visit the web page here.

- School Contact: Matt Howe