WCU Honors College has students building water filters that will go back to the communities who need them. Photo by Leanna Sanford.
Students in WCU’s University Studies – Interdisciplinary classes started building their own water filters this month.
The activity is connected to this year’s University campus theme – Water. Students will integrate the campus theme by discussing the impact of the global water crisis happening while participating in a team building exercise to make water filters.
Students are using Sawyer Filters that are small, portable and can easily attach to water bottles and filter over 100,000 gallons of water. The filters only take five minutes to assemble, but according to Leanna Sanford, HPAC honors peer academic coach, “it will probably take them [the students] 30 minutes to construct during the activity.”
WCU Brinson Honors College purchased 150 water filters from Wine to Water, a nonprofit organization.
Wine to Water is a non-profit organization that has helped over one million people get access to clean drinking water. They’ve provided filters to locations in Nepal, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and East Africa.
Doc Hendley, the founder and president of Wine to Water, believes it is important to not only distribute filters to communities, but to educate them on how to install their own filters as well.
“It’s not just going around and giving stuff away for free… It’s going around and empowering the local people,” said Hendley during a lecture given on campus about his organization and its impact on Sept. 12.
After WCU students construct the filters, they will be donated back to the organization and given to families who need them around the world.
