Activities around water
The theme for 2008 is ‘Think about water’, focusing on water’s importance to health and on the issues of access to clean water and water conservation.
What can you do?
We have developed a number of resources to help you to explore the issue of water and health, and to help you fundraise for World Thinking Day.
The activities are divided into three sub themes:
Each page contains practical ways to learn about water, ranging from keeping a personal water diary to testing types of water filters or holding competitions to reduce water use.
From each page you can download and print out the activities. You can also download the facts sheets to test what you and your troop think you know about water!
Why water?
Clean water is essential for life. We need clean water to drink, to stay healthy. It is also necessary to have a sufficient supply of water that is easily accessible to meet our daily hygienic and personal needs. But over a billion people in the world do not have it. This fact and the lack of sanitation result in over two million people dying from water-related diseases every year. In the developing world, 5,000 children die every day from diarrhoea caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation.
Girls and young women need clean water to survive – to be physically and mentally fit and healthy.
Water facts
Water covers 75 per cent of the Earth’s surface — 97.5 per cent of that is salt water, only 2.5 per cent is freshwater.
Icecaps and glaciers hold 74 per cent of the world’s freshwater. Almost all the rest is deep underground, or locked in soils as moisture or permafrost. Only 0.3 per cent of the world’s freshwater is found in rivers or lakes.
Less than one per cent of the world’s surface or below-ground freshwater is accessible for human use.